We recommend you leaving it at the default Optimal, which is 64 KB. The stripe block size can be set from 4 KB to 128 KB Figure 3 MediaShield BIOS Apr 25 2008 - Define a New Array - RAID Mode: Striped Stripe Block: Optimal Free Disks Port Disk Model Capacity 0.0 ST3120026AS 111.79GB 0.2 ST3120026AS 111.79GB Array Disks Port Disk Model Capacity [.] Add [.] Del [ESC] Quit [F6] Back [F7] Finish [TAB] Navigate [..] Select [ENTER] Popup GA-M720-ES3 Motherboard - 72 - Step 6: After assigning the RAID drives, press . A message which says "All data on new(or added) disks may be overwritten. Continue?" appears (Figure 5). To overwrite the data in the selected hard drives, press to confirm or press to cancel. (If the hard drives contain a previously created RAID array, you need to press to clear the data in the hard drives.) If you confirm Yes to the prompt above, the "Clear MBR?" prompt appears. Press to clear or to abort. (We recommend that you clear the MBR to reduce drive errors.) Figure 5 Figure 4 Step 5: Next, select the hard drives which you wish to be included in the disk array. The Free Disks block displays the information about the SATA hard drives that are available for use as RAID array drives. Press to move to the Free Disks block. Select the target hard drives using the up or down arrow key and use the right arrow key to add the hard drives to the Array Disks block (Figure 4). MediaShield BIOS Apr 25 2008 - Define a New Array - RAID Mode: Striped Stripe Block: Optimal [.] Add [.] Del [ESC] Quit [F6] Back [F7] Finish [TAB] Navigate [..] Select [ENTER] Popup 0.0 ST3120026AS 111.79GB 0.2 ST3120026AS 111.79GB Free Disks Port Disk Model Capacity Array Disks Port Disk Model Capacity Clear disk data ? [Y] YES [N] NO RAID Mode: Striped Stripe Block: Optimal [.] Add [.] Del [ESC] Quit [F6] Back [F7] Finish [TAB] Navigate [..] Select [ENTER] Popup 1.0.M ST3120026AS 111.79GB 1.1.M ST3120026AS 111.79GB MediaShield BIOS Apr 25 2008 - Define a New Array - Array Disks Port Disk Model Capacity Free Disks Port Disk Model Capacity All data on new(or added) disks may be overwritten. Contiune? [Y] YES [N] NO - 73 - Appendix To read more information about the RAID array, press to enter the Array Detail screen (Figure 7), which shows various information about the array, including the RAID mode, stripe block size, hard drive model name, and hard drive capacity, etc. Figure 7 Figure 6 After that, the Array List screen appears, displaying the RAID array that you have created (Figure 6). (Note: BBS stands for BIOS Boot Specification. This indicates that the boot device is defined in the BIOS.) To clear MBR, press in the Array Detail screen. When the "Clear MBR?" message appears, press to clear or to cancel. To delete the array, press in the Array Detail screen. When the "Delete array?" message appears, press to confirm or to cancel. Press to return to the Array List screen. To exit the NVIDIA RAID setup utility, press in the main menu or + in the Array List screen. Now, you can proceed to the installation of the SATA controller driver and operating system. MediaShield BIOS Apr 25 2008 - Array List - [Ctrl-X] Exit [..] Select [B] Set Bootable [N] New Array [ENTER] Detail Boot Status Vendor Array Size BBS Healthy NVIDIA STRIPE 223.57G Array 2: NVIDIA STRIPE 233.57G - Array Detail - RAID Mode: Striped Stripe Width : 2 Stripe Block: 64K Port Index Disk Model Capacity 0.0 0 ST3120026AS 111.79GB 0.2 1 ST3120026AS 111.79GB [R] Rebuild [D] Delete [C] Clear MBR [V] remove Vol [ENTER] Return GA-M720-ES3 Motherboard - 74 - 5-1-2 Making a SATA RAID/AHCI Driver Diskette for Windows XP (Required for AHCI and RAID Mode) To successfully install operating system onto SATA hard drive(s) that is/are configured to RAID/AHCI mode, you need to install the SATA controller driver during the OS installation. Without the driver, the hard drive may not be recognized during the Windows setup process. First of all, copy the driver for the SATA controller from the motherboard driver disk to a floppy disk. For installing Windows Vista, please directly load the SATA RAID driver from the motherboard driver disk during the OS installation process. For more details, refer to the next section. See the instructions below about how to copy the driver in MS-DOS mode (Note). Prepare a startup disk that has CD-ROM support and one blank formatted floppy disk. (Note) For users without a startup disk: Use an alternative system and insert the motherboard driver disk. From your optical drive folder, double click the MENU.exe file in the BootDrv folder (Figure 3). A command prompt window will open similar to that in Figure 2. Figure 2 Figure 3 Step 1: Insert the prepared startup disk and motherboard driver disk in your system. Boot from the startup disk. Once at the A:\> prompt, change to your optical drive (example: D:\>). At the D:\> prompt, type the following two commands. Press a...
