File Server Upgrade - Software RAID 5

[CalcProgrammer1]

I just bought 2 1.5TB Samsung HD154UI's on Newegg (they're on sale for $69.99 and I already had one). I want to put them in RAID 5 for 3TB of usable space but my server doesn't have a RAID controller (it has 2 SATA ports on the chipset and 2 SATA ports on the separate controller chip). It currently runs Windows XP Professional 32 bit.

I know XP has a size limitation (2TB?) so I'm wondering what the best way to go with this is. I'm going to need software RAID 5 (which can be enabled in XP from what I've read). If XP is limited to 2TB logical drives then that probably won't work as I want a single 3TB partition. I can install Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit, 32 bit preferred as I have extra keys from MSDNAA) but I'm wondering how to go about software RAID 5 on Windows 7 if XP won't work.

The other option is to use Linux but there are applications that I run on my server that don't work well under Linux (Wine), mainly game servers and TVersity, so I would like to stick to Windows if possible.

My server is an AMD Sempron 1.8GHz (single core) with 2GB DDR RAM. The primary OS drive is 120GB IDE so all 4 SATA ports are free. The current storage drive is a Seagate 1.5GB 7200.11 which is filling up. My current Samsung HD154UI is a backup of my server and is in an external enclosure, I will swap the Seagate back into the enclosure when I build the array with the 3 Samsung drives.

Sorry for all the questions, but I've never done a RAID setup before and my server isn't top notch hardware. I don't want to buy a RAID card because I'm cheap (the reason I'm getting RAID at all is 1.5TB's went on sale) and my server is only PCI/AGP, no PCI Express slots.

EDIT:
I'm going to simulate the setup in XP with a virtual machine, I made 3 1.5TB disks in VirtualBox and attached them to my XP VM, now to try RAIDing them and see how it goes.

EDIT 2:
I managed to perform the hack to enable RAID5 in XP SP3 and I think I got it working! I got 3 1.5TB virtual disks formatted and made into a RAID 5 array and XP detects the total size properly as 3 TB. I'm hoping this performs the same way on real hardware but to see it work on a VM is a relief. I was expecting issues with >2TB volume size but apparently it's just physical drive (VirtualBox wouldn't let me make a drive larger than 2TB anyways).

 

[kmote]

So have you done this on the hardware yet?

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

No, don't have the drives yet, just ordered them last night.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

I got the hard drives over the weekend and installed them. Since my server is old, it has 4 SATA I ports split between two different controllers. One is a SiS 180 integrated into the southbridge and the other is a Silicon Image 3112, both have 2 ports. I created the RAID and it started copying data, but it eventually crashed while regenerating. I rebooted and let it regenerate (takes around 10 hours) and it showed Healthy, so then I started copying data again. It worked for a little while then I got an error saying it failed redundancy due to I/O error. I tried regenerating the array again but it crashed. I switched the connections around several times but it didn't seem to help so I broke the array down and tried to reformat it. This would get anywhere from 1 to 10 percent and then crash (no BSOD, just the computer would freeze, no HDD clicking either).

I had tried everything so I went into BIOS and loaded failsafe defaults to restore the clock speed to default. Now it is formatting and is up to 31% after 10 hours and still going. Would a slight overclock cause the SATA controller (most likely the integrated one in the southbridge) to have I/O errors? The CPU is 1.6GHz stock, I had increased FSB from 200 to 232 (maximum the board would support) and the CPU was at 1.8GHz.

 

[kmote]

Unlikely but possible I would say. More likely to be a bad drive, port or cable.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Doubt it's the cable (one cable was used with my old drive and worked fine, the other I had used once before, and the third came with my new Gigabyte motherboard and was fresh out of the packaging) and I'm trying to determine if it's the drive or the port. I do think it was the port (SATA controller) being overclocked too high so that the clock rate was out of sync or otherwise flawed because it's been going for almost 24 hours now without a single issue (formatting at 66% and still going) when before it would crash between 1 and 10% (I had tried several times).

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

It is possible, especially if they are integrated into the SB/NB.

I remember back in the old days when overclocking, you had to be careful because the PCI bus would "overclock" along with everything, you would have to usually lock the bus to a certain frequency to prevent issues.