The Story of the RAID Card

So, as it turns out, the thing which needs to be done to get Windows XP to recognize the RAID card is reflashing the RAID card's BIOS. Which, based on the instructions, is probably more likely to make the Motherboard think that it's a RAID card, but whatever. If it works, it will work, and if it doesn't work, I'll have to deal with installing Windows on a motherboard that thinks it is a RAID Card, and Windows will have to not only figure out how to run on that motherboard, but also how to address a RAID card which is attached to a motherboard which thinks that it is a RAID card.

Actually, that might be worse. Ah, well. At least this way this whole debacle might be done in a few days.

(And I'll be a bit closer to getting an Ultra-portable Laptop! Horray! Asus' Eee PC, in case you were wondering - not very fast, but very portable, and portability is what I want).

I Hate Technology

Or, more specifically, the Windows "Operating System" (it barely works. Why should it be called an operating system? Something like GNU/Linux is an operating system. Windows is a joke). Here's the story behind this:

I recently got the chance to build a really high-end system for some money. By high end, I mean a Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.66GHz, 2 Gigs of ECC RAM, a high-end GPU, and a 15K RPM hard drive. That's the part where it all started going wrong. To start with, the hard drive needed to run off of a SAS card (the motherboard only had SATA). Well, that's fine, it just added a week and an extra $200+ to the cost of the system.

At this point (yesterday) all of the hardware was working fine - the SAS card would recognize the hard drive, the RAM had its cool heatsinks, all of the other heatsinks on the motherboard were doing fine, and the entire thing was pretty quiet (it only has three fans in it - the CPU fan).

However, then I had to install Windows XP on it. Shouldn't be a problem, I thought. I mean, it will recognize the drivers, right? As it turns out, no. After ripping my computers Floppy drive out to hook up to it, Windows would load the drivers successfully, but would still complain that there were no hard drives in the system. Even though there is one there, the SAS Card's BIOS recognizes it, and it is working perfectly. Apparently, the drivers do not allow Windows to recognize the drive as a valid device to install to.

This is a very bad thing, as the 15K RPM hard drive is one of the best things about this system. It's also the thing which the person who this system is for was the most excited about - it literally would not work to downgrade to a lowly 7.2K RPM SATA drive at this point. Well, I suppose that we could, and just not tell him, but that wouldn't be very honest.

As it stands, I have three options: install Linux on the drive, run Windows in a virtual machine, and explain to the recipient that this is vastly more secure (he's really paranoid: the main thing this system is going to do is run a virus-scanner 24/7). I could also install Windows on a Flash drive, or another really small and fast hard drive, and mess around with the defaults to make all programs, etc. install to the 15K RPM hard drive (This would probably not work very well. A Flash drive would have a tendency to fail very, very quickly, and a SSD would cost far to much). I could also install windows on an old 10GB hard drive I have lieing around and image it over onto the 15K RPM drive (this would probably not work. Windows is picky like that).

So, basically, I hate Windows. As it is, the debacle of the hard drive has more than doubled the time I expected to invest in this project, and there is no obvious end in sight.

Of course, this entire thing is my fault: I should have just said that a 15K RPM hard drive is just not viable, and gone with a 7.2K SATA instead. In the future, I'm going to say that any requests about hard drives which does not relate to the size will not work (or, alternatively, make the customer install the OS - which would be more fun, but would probably result in a lot of irritated customers).

My Computer

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a bit crazy about computers. I suppose that I could be described as a Technophile - after all, I spend most of my Saturdays fixing up old systems at the ACCRC, and messing around with various levels of technology. I used to constantly tinker with my computer (not anymore - it works perfectly), and I'm planning on upgrading it in a year or two (to a quad-core system. But that, of course, is another story). So, anyways, here are it's specs:

CPU: 3.33GHz Celeron D.
RAM: 2GB, 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2
GPU: GeForce FX 5200, Dual VGA Out
PCI: NIC (10/100), Fan (for the GPU). 1 PCI slot is available.
Motherboard: Machspeed P4MSD-800D2
HDD: 40GB SATA, 320GB SATA (formatted so that only 270GB of it is available), 160GB IDE (the IDE drive is somewhat questionable, nothing important is on it. I'm going to be moving it over into an external enclosure soon, so that I can have a lot of portable storage). Only 97.9GB are free right now - I have a LOT of Anime.
Fans: 7 80mm (CPU, 2 in a PCI slot, 3 case fans put wherever I feel like it, 1 in the power supply), 1 120mm (the other power supply fan). It's rather noisy, but not so much.
Monitors: 2 17-inch CRTs, each running at 768x1024, 85hz. Having two monitors is nice, though it has occasionally made me think that I should be able to move the cursor from my monitors onto a laptop.
Speakers: Standard 2-unit desktop.
Keyboard and Mouse: Wireless keyboard, 5-button Microsoft optical IntelliMouse. Both connect via USB.

That's it, I suppose. When I feel like it, I'll explain my plan to upgrade to a quad-core system (it's a lot cheaper than you think - if all you need is a new CPU (and a CPU fan), Motherboard, GPU, and some RAM, you can buy one for under $600 or $700. And I can support that assertion).