bump.

 

swoope, the RAM is all yours my good man. I've been having some computer "issues' with my desktop lately so I need to fix those before I go adding more parts.

 

swoope got the 2x512Mb sticks. the 1Gb stick is still up for grabs jedi .

btw, what kinda issues are you having? maybe i can take a look-see at your pc .

 

for a while, it was powering off randomly. I figured it was an overheating or power supply issue; so i replaced the P/S and got a new case.

After I did that, it stopped shutting down but now it randomly restarts. I talked to Symantec about it and they recommended changing some settings so at least I see an error code before it restarts (blue screen of death) Normally it does it when it's running something HD intensive; defragging, imaging a drive, etc. (sometimes radomly like an hour earlier)

KrazieKavie thinks I should reformat the drive but I'm running RAID 0 / 1 and I don't want to reformat both.

 

actually, that sounds like a memory issue. it could also be that the memory controller is starting to go out. what kind of system is it? list out your specs!

download then run Orthos. You can also use Memtest86. Click on the "free download" section. there you will download the zipped file under "ISO images". use a program like Nero or something to burn that ISO image onto a CD. restart the computer and boot from CD.

you might have to go into your computer's BIOS and make that change to set CD ROM as first boot device.

once memtest is loaded up, you will see a blue screen with the text saying it's running some tests. let those tests run for about 4 or more hours, preferably overnight while you sleep, and if there is any red in the bottom half of the screen, then either your system memory is faulty, your memory controller is faulty, or the slot where the memory is installed to is faulty. most likely though, it's the memory that's faulty.

btw, if those BSODs continue and become progressively worse, you might have to reinstall your OS because as the BSODs become progressive, they will damage or corrupt windows critical files and/or even the registry.

 

Here's my system:

--------[ Summary ]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Computer:
Computer Type ACPI Multiprocessor PC
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 2
Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Computer Name ECLAIR
User Name Renesis SE3P
Logon Domain ECLAIR
Date / Time 2007-08-03 / 22:20

Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 660, 3600 MHz (18 x 200)
Motherboard Name Intel Black Creek D955XBK (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)
Motherboard Chipset Intel Glenwood i955X
System Memory 2048 MB (DDR2-667 DDR2 SDRAM)
BIOS Type Intel (04/27/06)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Bluetooth Communications Port (COM6)
Communication Port Bluetooth Communications Port (COM7)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (256 MB)
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (256 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E
Monitor Delta DE-770
Monitor Hyundai ImageQuest B90A_ [19" LCD] (152020050516)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter SigmaTel STAC9221D A2 @ Intel 82801GB ICH7 - High Definition Audio Controller [A-1]

Storage:
IDE Controller CMD PCI-0649 Ultra DMA IDE Controller
IDE Controller Intel(R) 82801GB Serial ATA Storage Controllers - 27C0
IDE Controller Intel(R) 82801GB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF
Storage Controller A347SCSI SCSI Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive Maxtor 6B200M0 (200 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA)
Disk Drive Maxtor 6L200P0 (200 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Disk Drive ST3300622A (300 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Optical Drive AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device (Virtual DVD-ROM)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GSA-H54L
Optical Drive LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163 (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 45002 MB (730 MB free)
D: (NTFS) 149464 MB (12457 MB free)
E: (NTFS) 97229 MB (8998 MB free)
F: (NTFS) 97237 MB (6308 MB free)
G: (NTFS) 143078 MB (111566 MB free)
H: (NTFS) 143078 MB (61308 MB free)
Total Size 659.3 GB (196.6 GB free)

 

And yes... I do know that I have alot of hard drive space... It's going to be a biatch to back up all my stuff

 

i have .9Tb of hard drive space on my main computer alone.

if you want me to count up all my computers, i have ~500Gb extra storage space.

and i plan on purchasing more hard drives in the near future . nothing less than 750Gb drives.

 

xrider: i'll try running that in a few hours and see what happens.

thanks!

 

Two things, what about dual booting on this type of setup??? Possible?
I really like the clean performance of XP64 but would be neat to see the 64bit Vista OS shine on my super gaming box. Having the option to boot to either would be really neat.

Secondly I am using my 2 raptors just for the OS, I have two other 250GB hitachi 'deathstars' running RAID0 for programs and storage and stuff ... but 4 raptors RAID0 idea is cool! Even though I have 4 more SATA connectors available (on a weaker chip set IIRC) I have all 4 hard drives in front mounted drive bay coolers, so I am all outta space on my Kandalf!

 

The flash drive are getting alot larger.

It would be easier to copy it to that.

 

I never really like the whole idea of RAID hence all of my different partitions and hard drives.

 

dual booting is possible. however, the boot manager for Vista is a load of crap compared to winXP. Vista's boot manager doesn't like to be set up for dual boot on the same hard drive. i'm not saying it can't happen, but it's more likely to give you boot issues when loading windows if you install winXP and Vista on the same hard drive. what alot of people do, is install winXP on one hard drive, and then install Vista on another hard drive. so, i would recommend that you install winXP/winXP x64 first, then install Vista.

RAID 0 is good for read/load performance. however, it is not recommended to use for storage or back-up of your work. reason being is because half of the information of whatever data you have saved, is saved to each drive. so, if one drive goes out, all your data goes out along with it. what alot of people, including myself do, is set up a RAID 0 for installing games to, or using it for your OS. a RAID 0 set up for games is for loading purposes.

the way RAID 0 works is like this, since only half of all information is on each drive, the arms inside the hard drives do not have to search for the required information nearly as long for them to access the requested data. therefore, reading (AKA loading) is much faster. so, what this breaks down to is this; if RAID 0 is set up for your OS drive, the time it takes for you to boot up into windows is cut down by a few seconds. if RAID 0 is set up for all your installed games only, then all the load times of your games will be decreased significantly. again, this is because each drive does not have to search nearly as much to gather the requested information. with newer motherboards supporting RAID 0, RAID 0 has been evolving to support more than just two drives. you can pretty much use as many drives as possible, provided your motherboard supports it. i know that upto four hard drives can be used in RAID 0. that was a while ago that i checked up on that. i'm sure there are some motherboards out there that can support more than that. the principle is the same still, one drive goes out, all data goes out; with more drives in a RAID 0 configuration, the faster the read speeds will be.

for security or back-up purposes, you want to use RAID 1. RAID 1 works the opposite way of RAID 0. what RAID 1 does, is that it copies all information from one drive to the other, thus it automatically creates a mirrored copy of all your information. so, if incase one drive goes out, you still have a back up copy of all your important stuff. RAID 1 is also slower in terms of read (loading) speeds though. so performance in terms of loading up your favorite game, or booting into windows will be slower.

what kind of motherboard do you have? let me know so i can look into it more and see what you can do about it. and if you want more hard drives, you need a bigger case .

 

if you have all those partitions, each with a bunch of things on them, and that one hard drive goes out, everything is gone.

i think you need to use RAID 1

 

Thanks for the info on the RAID stuff and dual boot... I was well aware of the data loss concern with RAID0 when I built this beast, but nothing is stored on this gaming box that is super critical. I am not an overclocker/super wiz, but I did do the basics, like RAID0. I mostly did this computer for a cooling experiment! $3800 just to play around with some relatively generic Thermaltake liquid cooling components!!! But it all works and it is a fast enough machine for the time being...
and a bigger case than a Kandalf???? This thing already weighs 78 pounds!!!

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI
AMD Athalon FX X2? 4200
2 gigs corsair
BFG GeForce 7800GTX (Only one for now)
2 36 GB raptors RAID 0
2 250 GB Deskstars RAID 0
Creative X-Fi
Antec TruePower 2.0
lots of fans, fan controllers and radiators and green liquid
All hell, here is a pic from a couple years ago when I built it, before the video card arrived...

 

not a bad looking machine there .

oh, btw guys, updated to my forsale post....rx8 related, hahahaha

 

bump. budah bump

 

hey,

send me a pm if you still have # 4. the 256mb stick..

beers

 

PM sent .

 

at u.

beer

 

o' guard!

lol