In this article, we'll tell you how we assembled a decent RAID 1 PC. This is just a template, of course, so feel free to upgrade as you like.

Background

Because of the capacity drop in a RAID 1, the first priority is to buy hard drives big enough to give you enough total storage space. We chose 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives (model 6Y160M0) for a 160GB final capacity, half of the 320GB they would provide as unassociated or RAID 0 drives.

As for the rest of the PC, we tried to balance speed, features, and modest cost. The 8X/4X/12X DVD burner can back up precious business data to either DVD-R/RWs or DVD+R/RWs, 4.7GB at a time. An impressive Athlon 64 will crunch that data in a hurry, while the Radeon 9200 SE video card will handle any business or light gaming task. We do recommend doubling the RAM to 512MB at least, though, and going with a more established brand such as Corsair, Micron/Crucial, or Kingston. We stuck with 256MB for dumb budgetary reasons.



The Build

RaidMax supplied two USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports in the 278WBP's fascia under a concealment panel, plus knockout holes for us to add our own FireWire, headphone, and microphone jacks. Unfortunately, that concealment panel felt pretty flimsy. The company also used fairly thin steel in the rest of the case to keep its cost low, but that also makes the finished system light enough to move around easily. Our case did have a few burred edges, but none were in areas we would grab during a typical assembly. Furthermore, none of the edges was sharp enough to cut an intern's fingers, and this intern was particularly thin-skinned.

Moving aside the thorough Epox users manual, case badge sticker, and fold-up desk calendar, we removed our EP-8HDA3+ motherboard from its box and antistatic plastic bag. Its dual LAN (local-area network) ports, one of which supports Gigabit Ethernet, should help our new PC fit right into a business environment. After hours, its dual S/PDIF (Sony Philips Digital Interface Format) audio outputs will complement the DVD drive and Radeon 3D card for entertainment while you unwind.

It's a standoff. We used the Epox mainboard as a guide to help us install brass-colored standoffs in our case. These male-female threaded spacers, included with the RaidMax and most other brands of cases, keep the motherboard firmly mounted about a quarter of an inch from the inner panel of the case. Never skip these. If you bolted the mainboard directly to the case without standoffs in between, the soldered points on the underside of the board would almost certainly short out. This would also be a hazard if you carelessly installed a standoff where the board had no mounting hole. When properly installed, standoffs also facilitate some ventilation behind the board. The thin space between the board and case panel acts as a chimney through which warm air rises and draws cooler air from below.

We removed a knockout panel in the rear of the case to let us install the Epox board's I/O shield, a chromed rectangle with custom apertures for the board's USB, audio, and other ports. After we double-checked our standoff positions and tightened the standoffs with a small wrench, we fastened the motherboard to them. We used bolts from the grab-bag of screws and other hardware that RaidMax included with our case. Next, we connected the 20-pin and 4-pin power cable harnesses from the case's power supply to their sockets on the upper left of the motherboard. Some boards and CPUs don't require the 4-pin supplemental power cable, but ours did.

Next, we connected the front panel's switches, ports, and lights to the pins in the mainboard's lower-right corner. These are tricky waters, so take a good treasure map: the motherboard's manual. It's very easy to slide the tiny cable connectors onto the wrong pins or slip them on backward, so double-check your work. White or black wires usually indicate negative polarity (-), and colored wires are generally positive (+).

Processor process. To seat the Athlon 64 CPU in its socket, first unlatch the socket's locking lever. Push the metal or plastic lever a little to the side and then pull the lever upward until it's pointing straight away from the socket. Find the triangular mark on one corner of the Athlon 64, which designates a corner without as many pins as the others. This corresponds to a similar corner of the socket. The processor should drop into the socket holes easily when it's oriented correctly. After it does, hold the chip down with light finger pressure while you bring the locking lever back down. Once the lever snaps alongside the socket, internal contacts will clamp each of the CPU's tiny legs, keeping the processor from falling out.

We received an AMD-approved heatsink and fan with our CPU's retail package. Note that chips sold as OEM instead of retail or boxed won't come with either of these necessities. Being careful not to touch the square of thermal putty AMD applied to our heatsink, we removed the sink's plastic cover. Turning the heatsink so that its metal latches corresponded to the socket's tabs, and so that we would be able to get a hand on the sink's large plastic cam lever later, we set the sink straight down on the CPU. We made sure both metal latches hooked onto the socket and then turned the cam lever until it locked in place. Finally, we slipped the 3-wire fan cable connector onto the motherboard header (group of pins) marked CPU FAN. If you forget this step, a motherboard with thermal protection will shut off your PC soon after you start it. A board with no such protection will let your expensive CPU fry.

RAM is easy to install. It only goes in one way and snaps straight down into place with a little firm finger pressure on each end. We flicked the small levers on the ends of each RAM slot into the notches in our DDR modules. The same went for the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot's lever, which we toggled into place after inserting the Radeon 9200 video card, a replacement for a defective $43 Radeon 9200 SE we bought. If your case is new, you might have to press a cutout out of the case's rear to allow the AGP card's bracket external access. We screwed the top of the bracket into place and then connected our Samsung monitor's VGA video cable to the Radeon card. With one more glance at everything we'd assembled, we added the AC power cord and turned on the half-finished PC. It worked fine until the inevitable halt when it found no boot disk, CD, or hard drive. All this was as it should have been. We needed to check a few things in the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) Setup before we continued, so we rebooted and pressed DELETE at the brief prompt. We set the boot device order to floppy, CD-ROM, and then a SATA or SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) hard drive. We set the clock, turned on support for our USB keyboard and mouse, and set the AGP slot as the graphics bus. The BIOS already listed RAID for our SATA ports' function, so we saved our changes and exited the Setup program.

Going driving. It was time to install our drives. We bolted our floppy drive and DVD drive into open bays, removing plastic knockout plates from the front panel to let us slip media into the drives later. We attached a 4-pin power cable to the DVD and a smaller power lead to the floppy. Next, we took an EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics) and a floppy data cable from the Epox motherboard's box. Using only the connectors on the ends of the cables, we linked both drives to the proper headers on the motherboard. We made sure that the cables' red stripes corresponded to Pin 1 on each drive, and that the floppy cable's twist was nearest the drive.

We installed our two Maxtor hard drives in a similar way in the lower 3.5-inch drive bay. Epox had given us two SATA data cables with our motherboard, which we installed between the drives and the headers nearest the VIA southbridge chip. We used regular 4-pin Molex leads from the power supply. If your motherboard or power supply comes with adapters to SATA-style power connectors, you can use them in place of—not in addition to—the Molex style.

In order to designate our hard drives as a RAID before installing Windows, we entered the VIA SATA RAID utility. To do this, we pressed TAB during bootup. We selected Create Array and then Array Mode RAID 1 (Mirroring) and RAID 1 For Data Protection. Next we chose Select Disk Drives (pressing ENTER to highlight both Maxtor 160GB drives) and then Start Create Process. The utility asked us if we wanted to copy one drive's contents to the other. We typed N for no, as there wasn't anything on either drive yet. After VIA warned us that any data on our drives would be "destoried," whatever that is, we went ahead with the array creation. Back in the main menu, we chose Select Boot Array to designate our new RAID 1 as the boot device.

We inserted our Windows XP CD and then exited the VIA utility. Our system rebooted. Note that WinXP Setup won't recognize a SATA drive or RAID without some help from the user, so you have to carefully watch the first moments of the program. When Setup asked us momentarily to press F6 to install any third-party SCSI or RAID drivers, we did. Pressing S when prompted, we inserted the VIA SATA RAID driver diskette that came with our Epox mainboard. (Follow the board manufacturer's directions to make a driver diskette if you didn't receive one with your motherboard.)

We directed Windows Setup to create partitions on our new RAID, starting with a 10GB C: partition for the OS. Everything went smoothly, and when the desktop finally appeared, we verified in My Computer that we had 160GB of total storage. We installed the latest drivers for our hardware, including the VIA 4-in-1 for the motherboard chipset, and Windows updates.

After some thought, we decided to flip the fan in the middle of the side panel window. It was a fairly strong air mover, set up to push exhaust air out of the case. We already had a moderate exhaust fan in the power supply, but for intake, we had only the weak fan we'd placed in front of the hard drives. We've had good luck with slightly more air intake pressure than exhaust, so we unscrewed the side panel fan and reattached it facing inward.

Testing

Using the same benchmarks as we did with our RAID 0 system, we found that there's definitely a price to pay for RAID 1's brand of safety. Its read rates were exactly half those of the RAID 0, all components being equal. Furthermore, the RAID 0 outpaced the RAID 1 by 15% in PCMark04's hard drive test and 11% in IOMeter's file server benchmark.

That said, our RAID 1 was no slower than a single drive in our tests. If you added a new drive to an existing PC in a RAID 1, you wouldn't notice any difference in speed or capacity. However, you would have an exceptional no-brainer of a backup system.

Final Remarks

Even if you're satisfied with the data redundancy of your new RAID 1, remember that it's still very important to back up that data to other media. A strong power surge could zap both drives in your PC at the same time, or a thief could simply walk out with the whole system. Also, you should store those backup tapes or discs offsite so a fire or other disaster couldn't destroy every copy.

by Marty Sems