Issue with RAID drivers on Windows 2000

[Ampera]

Gotta love F6 RAID drivers.

So, I am running a Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-57 machine with 3.5GB (Was SUPPOSED to be 4GB, but stupid seller sent me a half-dud stick, 512MB isn't enough for me to send it back though) of DDR-400.
This is on an EPoX 2themax EP-9NPA+SLI, which has no resources or manual that I can find (EPoX is bust and so are their downloads even on the internet archive).

This board has an nForce 4 SLI chipset with 4 drive SATA 2 RAID. I have four WD1600 160GB SATA hard drives I have arranged into a four drive RAID 0/stripe. Windows XP installs perfectly fine, detecting the entire array as one drive, and being able to format and copy files to it. Well, I want to try out Windows 2000 for stability reasons, but unfortunately using either the Windows 2000 or Windows XP drivers ends up giving me two 131 GB empty drives on the same drive ID, and when I install to one, it copies files nowhere and doesn't allow for booting.

I have no clue why it's doing this, as they are the right drivers for the right chipset. It's the exact same driver packaged that works for Windows XP, so why it just straight up refuses to work is beyond me. Any ideas of what I could try?

[Halcyon]

I recall having issues with RAID and Windows Server 2003, not the same symptoms as you though, but the following is worth a shot in any case.

When I loaded the driver at the F6 prompt, it would detect and accept the .INF file no problems. As setup continued and it attempted to load the driver (right before partitioning/formatting the drive), it would just blue screen. I initially thought maybe one of the other files was corrupt. It drove me nuts for days.

I ended up fixing the issue by incrementally trying older and older versions of the same driver, until one successfully loaded. I don't recall what type of RAID controller it was, but I do remember the manufacturer's support site specifically stating that the newer versions of the driver were supported by Windows 2003, which was clearly not the case.

[Ampera]

The issue here is that I can barely get ANY version of the driver. nVidia doesn't supply the drivers anymore as most legacy downloads are broken and have been broken for years.

[Halcyon]

Can you post a copy of the INF file that you're using.

[Ampera]

Here it is: https://pastebin.com/RMmh7aat

[sphinx]

Just for knowledge. If you didnt already know this, loss of any of those drives and all data is gone.

[Ampera]

Just for knowledge. If you didnt already know this, loss of any of those drives and all data is gone.

Of course, but none of this is critical data. It's all game that I can reinstall anyways, and non-critical misc files. I wouldn't trust this drive configuration with anything, besides being wicked fast.

If I seriously cared about anything that would be on there, I would pull backups.

[sphinx]

That is the limit of windows 2000 regarding to this url.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/hard-disk-drives-capacity-limits/6/

[Ampera]

Ah, the limit of regular Windows 2000. I don't know if mine is SP4, it might not be. I did try an Advanced Server disc which I think is SP4, but that didn't work either.

Also, I do not believe this applies to SCSI, as I have a 147GB SCSI HDD on unmodified Windows 95 (not lying here). I'm aware that that is the number of the 48-bit LBA limit, but I think there is something more subtly wrong here. It's also worth noting that the RAID controller acts like a SCSI controller when using RAID.

[sphinx]

Why not use linux if stability is an issue with windows if thats possible.
I have used linux with raid for some time without issues.

[Ampera]

Because this is strictly a gaming machine that absolutely requires Windows. It has two 7800GTX 512MB editions in there. When I say stability, I am saying running some games will crash the computer on fresh installs. This could be due to the PAE kernel I am using on Windows XP, but if that's the case I want to use Windows 2000 anyways as that has better PAE support than Windows XP.

[sphinx]

From what i remember on a similar graphics card 8600gts i think it was, i had some funny things going on
caused by the graphics card itself running windows. Just random lockups and and other weird stuff happening.

[Ampera]

From what i remember on a similar graphics card 8600gts i think it was, i had some funny things going on
caused by the graphics card itself running windows. Just random lockups and and other weird stuff happening.

Honestly I wouldn't put it past this system for a second, but as it stands that's not the avenue I am addressing at the moment. Right now, I am trying to get Windows 2000 to work with my RAID controller. I'll dig up a SP4 specific CD and see where that gets me though.

[Halcyon]

Why not use linux if stability is an issue with windows if thats possible.
I have used linux with raid for some time without issues.

It's not a stability issue with Windows itself, it's a driver issue. Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003 are rock solid operating systems, arguably just as stable as Linux when configured properly on decent hardware. It wasn't uncommon to see a Windows box running for years without a reboot.

Have you tried some of these drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_intel_archive.html
These are generic drivers as opposed to manufacturer-specific ones. I often found NVIDIAs generic drivers worked better with some graphics cards.

Have you also considered just using dynamic disks within Windows itself? I've used these before and they work quite well, no worse than an on-board RAID controller. Most on-board RAID you get with motherboards are pretty basic and are really no better than software alternatives (although on-board RAID is essentially software RAID anyway).

[Ampera]

Most of that is for Intel, and as I stated, every single one of those Windows 2000/XP links are completely broken, either doing nothing, or giving me a pop-up with a 403 error.

[sphinx]

Try to only use 2 drives in a raid0 configuration and see if it installs, it seems weird that u got 4 drives 160X4 and it reports as 132x2.

[Ampera]

I tried two drives, including disabling RAID functionality on two of the drives, and the result is identical. I also tried a newer driver version I found on the driver section for another motherboard with the identical chipset.

[sphinx]

Personally in such a situation i would install windows on one single non raid drive and then after
installation is finished i would try to add 2 drives in a raid0 just to see if the drive will be usable
and works as it should. That would be my my kinda last option.

That would show if the drivers are ok or not and then test with moving and copying around
files and do some sort of crc check before and after to see if files are the same, the system
should show filesystem errors in the event viewer if the filesystem is not working as it should.
just a crc check as a double check.

I have another thing that might be and issue with raid that is if the hardrive goes to "sleep" or
parks its haeds it might not repsond in time for the OS and cause errors.

This has been an issue with adaptec cards and certain hardrives and the raid cards says drive is
faulty. so to fix this all power saving needs to be disabled to get it to work properly.

[Halcyon]

Or, look for a non-ambiguous hardware controller with proper support for the operating system you're trying to run. The chip set you're using wasn't super common. Stick with your Intel, LSI & Adaptec controllers and you really can't go too wrong.

I have another thing that might be and issue with raid that is if the hardrive goes to "sleep" or
parks its haeds it might not repsond in time for the OS and cause errors.

This has been an issue with adaptec cards and certain hardrives and the raid cards says drive is
faulty. so to fix this all power saving needs to be disabled to get it to work properly.

This is an inherent problem with some hard disks and RAID controllers. Normally, it should be detected properly. But I've seen on-board RAID's (AKA "soft RAIDs") fall over due to hard disk timeouts, especially using bog-standard consumer drives.

I know you're going for old-school, but RAID has been pretty much dead for a long time. These days, I prefer a decent software solution (like ZFS) or even Dynamic Disks in Windows over traditional RAID. As the old saying goes, on-board RAID isn't "true" RAID, but RAID in itself is pretty crap compared to todays standards.

I'm in the process now of migrating my existing NAS over to ZFS and ditching the hardware RAID controller completely. It just not efficient and causes more problems than without.

[tooki]

This should really be in the vintage computing section! Win2K is now almost 20 years old...

[Ampera]

Someone yelled at me for posting about a Pentium Pro machine I built, not to mention this is SATA 2 and AMD64, not exactly ancient.

[Halcyon]

Someone yelled at me for posting about a Pentium Pro machine I built, not to mention this is SATA 2 and AMD64, not exactly ancient.

Funny you should mention that. At work I was asked the question "what is vintage?" and it was quite a difficult definition to define in terms of vintage computing.

I personally define it as the time when "computers were good", i.e.: before the proliferation of generic "beige boxes" and cheaply manufactured hardware. Yes, even Apple back then made good machines, how times have changed! To apply that to software, I certainly think Windows 2000 falls into that category. It's well and truly out of mainstream use, but the same cannot be said for Windows XP, it's still in wide use today. That's MY definition anyway, yours may differ.

[Red Squirrel]

This should really be in the vintage computing section! Win2K is now almost 20 years old...

That makes me feel so old but yeah it's that old.  My first self build was an AMD 2000+ machine and I put windows 2000 on it as it was the latest and greatest at the time.  XP may have been out, but it was really problematic at the start.  To this day, win2k is still my favourite windows OS.

I need to see if I can rebuild one of my older machines for nostalgia sake.  I may actually still have the AMD 2000+ system somewhere in the basement.  The question is whether or not I still have all the drivers... lol.