3rd IDE drive ML310 RAID

[Annette Horton]

Installed two identical 80BG IDE drives; one as device 0 on both controllers (jumpered as Masters). The default was Drive 1 + 2, Array 0, which is what I thought I wanted. Installed Windows XP and all needed software. Windows recognized the two drives as one. Expected an increase in speed over the single drive 40GB originally installed. No increase.

Added a 3rd drive on the device 1 cable position on controller 1. RAID changed configuration to Array 0, Array 1, Array 2 showing RAID 0 on 3 separate drives. Windows XP recognizes Drives C and F as 76GB & 153G, (CD & DVD were D & E). No increase in speed. My purpose is speed; not redundancy.

When I first tried to configure the RAID on this computer, I installed 4 drives of differing sizes so as to follow which was being assigned where. RAID defaulted to drives 1+3 as Array 0 (devices 0 on both controllers) and drives 2+4 as Array 1 (devices 1 on both controllers). There was no way to reset that, thus the trial and error to find how the default configuration would assign the RAID 0 to drive pairs.

What do I need to do to get max speed? And must I reinstall Windows and all software again to do it?