Adaptec AR0-1130C Raid Controller Setup and Configuration

September 4, 2004

I am installing Windows 2000 on a computer with the AR0-1130C controller installed with 3 hot swapable hard drives to be in a RAID 5 configuration.

The first step is to flash the controller bios and update the drivers to the latest and greatest. You simply do this by booting with the Bios and Driver Selection Utility. This is a fery important step. As silly as it may sound, you MUST do this in order to see what driver disk you have to use. Adaptec supplies two driver disks and it WILL NOT work if you use the wrong one. If you have to use Driver Disk B there may be more problems for you down the road. Fortunately I had to use Driver Disk A in my setup.

After that, the next step is to boot with the Configuration Disk. You'll use this disk to configure the array and set it up. It's pretty straightforward.

Once you do that and go to install Windows 2000, make sure and press F6 at the first part of the install and supply the correct driver disk for the array. Windows 2000 does not include drivers to use the array by default.

Hopefully you've completed the install of Windows 2000 now and the last step is to install the CI/O Array Management Software in Windows. I used the latest version at the time (4.03), despite the fact that the Adaptec pages for this particular controller did not list this version for the controller. Heck, they didn't even list Windows 2000. From what I've read, the Windows NT version of the management software will work with Windows 2000. It is pretty dang important that you install and use this software. Especially if you are using something like a RAID 5 configuration and one of the disks failes. This software is responsible for determining when a disk fails and rebuilding the array with a new disk inserted.

Because Adaptec seems to be pretty big on license agreements when you download anything from their site, I am simply going to link to their site. However, I have attached the manual for doing everything I have explained which you really should follow- this manual is actually pretty helpful.

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