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How-To File #10252007JN

How to create a 1-TerraByte Array with 4 250GB drives and two 3Ware 2-Port raid controllers

Step 1: Hardware Installation

Install the two PCI raid adaptors and four hard drives into your computer. Different system manufacturers have different hardware installation procedures for detailed information on how to install add-on cards, and hard drives into your computer please see your system’s manufacturer. Make sure your system’s power supply can handle the load of 4 hard drives! Remember the 3Ware controllers can only support one drive per IDE channel. So you will need four cables, one for each drive. You will need to download and install the drivers for the 3Ware cards from 3Ware’s website.

Please see 3Ware’s download site:

http://www.3ware.com/support/download.asp

Step 2: Hardware Raid

After you’ve installed the hardware you will need to configure the hardware raid in both of the controllers. In order to create a 1-TerraByte hard drive with four drives you will need to first create two 500GB arrays with your 3Ware controllers. The kind of array you will need to set up is called a “Raid-0” or stripped array. Please see 3Ware’s website for more information on how to configure your controllers.

Please see 3Ware’s website:

http://www.3ware.com/support/UserDocs/7000IG_042903.pdf

Step 3: Software Raid:

After the hardware raid is configured and you have your two 500GB arrays you will need to “glue” them together to create your large 1-TerraByte array. To do this you will need to enter into window’s management console and configure the two arrays as one stripped array in windows. This procedure has only been tested in Windows XP and therefore we can only confirm this technique to work under Windows XP. There are other software solutions, and other operating systems can do similar things. Please see Microsoft’s Knowledgebase article # 308424 for more information on creating a windows striped array.

Please see Microsoft’s website:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424/en-us

After you’ve “glued” the two arrays together you can now go into the “My Computer” folder and right-click on the newly created hard drive, select “Properties” and check out your new 1-TerraByte array!!

There are other configurable options for your system’s array; you could select to do two mirrored arrays with your 3Ware controllers and ultimately make a single 500GB array that would allow a drive to fail on either of the hardware arrays without hurting your data! You can also span the drives in Windows instead of stripping them, and allow for expansion in the future by being able to simply add more drives! Experiment and figure out what would be best for you!