ASUS P4P800 Deluxe

[Lord Carnage]

Hey there...

Sorry to bother you with such a simplistic question, but I am getting
conflicting information the more I read, thus the more confused I'm
becoming!!!

Anyhoo, I just purchased this board for a new machine I'm building for my
wife. She's been burnt twice in the past year with hard drive crashes, that
have meant her spending time on the internet re-acquiring her recipes, mp3s,
other work research, etc, etc...

At any rate, twice in a year has REALLY pissed her off and made my life
tougher as a result. I've decided NO MORE. So other than replacing her
system, I'm also going RAID1 for her data drive/partition.

My question is this... The user manual I got with the drive says
SPECIFICALLY that IDE RAID is available in many formats (including RAID1),
but that SATA RAID is only available as RAID0, and that is only under
WindowsXP. My wife's current O/S is 2000, and I would ONLY 'upgrade' her if
there was a benefit. In this case, I can't see one as the SATA RAID does
not meet my mirroring requirements, so Windows 2000 is good enough (yes, the
CPU is a 2.4 C, and while hyperthreading is only available under 2000, I'm
not worried enough about that - only RAID).

On the other hand, I've seen a post earlier in this newsgroup and one other
location (don't remember where right now) that suggest that under WinXP,
SATA RAID1 is available!!!

OK - PLEASE help me. Which is it. I have 2 SATA drives here in front of
me, as well as 2 IDE drives. I also have 1 XP Pro license and 1 2000 Pro
license. Which do I install?? Ideally, If I could do Win2k with SATA RAID1,
I would be ONE HAPPY CAMPER! I'll go to WinXP if it gets me SATA RAID1,
otherwise I'll be doing Win2k with IDE RAID1.

Thanks in advance, and hope everyone has had a great holiday season!

Lord Carnage

 

[DaveW]

There are two different flavors of Raid 1: Raid done in Hardware, and Raid
done in Software. Raid in hardware (most commonly used) is done using a
hardware Raid controller on the motherboard or as an add-on card. Software
Raid, which is MUCH slower, is performed by Windows 2000 or XP. Raid in
Software is accomplished using Windows 2000 or XP's Disk Manager under
Administrative Tools.

 

[Maximus]

Hey there...

Sorry to bother you with such a simplistic question, but I am getting
conflicting information the more I read, thus the more confused I'm
becoming!!!

Anyhoo, I just purchased this board for a new machine I'm building for my
wife. She's been burnt twice in the past year with hard drive crashes, that
have meant her spending time on the internet re-acquiring her recipes, mp3s,
other work research, etc, etc...

At any rate, twice in a year has REALLY pissed her off and made my life
tougher as a result. I've decided NO MORE. So other than replacing her
system, I'm also going RAID1 for her data drive/partition.

My question is this... The user manual I got with the drive says
SPECIFICALLY that IDE RAID is available in many formats (including RAID1),
but that SATA RAID is only available as RAID0, and that is only under
WindowsXP. My wife's current O/S is 2000, and I would ONLY 'upgrade' her if
there was a benefit. In this case, I can't see one as the SATA RAID does
not meet my mirroring requirements, so Windows 2000 is good enough (yes, the
CPU is a 2.4 C, and while hyperthreading is only available under 2000, I'm
not worried enough about that - only RAID).

On the other hand, I've seen a post earlier in this newsgroup and one other
location (don't remember where right now) that suggest that under WinXP,
SATA RAID1 is available!!!

OK - PLEASE help me. Which is it. I have 2 SATA drives here in front of
me, as well as 2 IDE drives. I also have 1 XP Pro license and 1 2000 Pro
license. Which do I install?? Ideally, If I could do Win2k with SATA RAID1,
I would be ONE HAPPY CAMPER! I'll go to WinXP if it gets me SATA RAID1,
otherwise I'll be doing Win2k with IDE RAID1.

Thanks in advance, and hope everyone has had a great holiday season!

Lord Carnage

Many people may suggest you to use RAID; I would suggest only use non-RAID
to copy your data for safety to a second hard disk. Though hard disks now
may
die at a rate somewhat higher, it is always good to notice any strange noise
from
hard disk. Then, with a new hard disk to save data, you may avoid crash at
the
wrong time. I had this bad luck few times in crucial points of time.

One downside of RAID is to make sure one disk of the pair does not die. If
it is,
the data may be lost too when you try to recover or change the RAID
controller.
Which means, it is almost the same as copy to another hard disk. The beauty
of
a second hard disk for data safety is that, it is very simple, just plug it
into any
computer, and you get your data immediately.

If you want RAID, play with it until you knows the rules. WinXP seems better
with
RAID.

Max

 

[FredP]

I would second Maximus' excellent advice ... you have the drives, so use an
IDE drive as a 'copy' of your working OS(s) & data and back it up on a
regular basis. I use BootIt NG (www.bootitng.com) to do that and it only
takes about 7-8 minutes to do the cloning. The P4P800 is a good board and
has onboard connectors that will handle ALL of your drives.

As an aside, the above program has the added feature of allowing you to
install both W2K and WinXP on different partitions/drives. You can 'hide'
one from the other and boot to either, and use a third partition for common
data if desired. I would definitely recommend trying WinXP since you have
it.

Feel free to email me if you need more info (check the address to remove
the obvious).

 

[Lord Carnage]

I appreciate both your responses...

If this were my machine, I would agree with your assessment completely. I
am a network admin, and work with computers all day long, knowing what to
look for, what to listen for, and how to make actve backups of my data on a
regular basis. BUT this is my wife's machine. She doesn't want anything
she has to worry about. She just wants something that works. If I tell her
to backup files to another location, she will forget, or forget how to do
it, then just not do it.

I was going for a solution that works on it's own. No user intervention.
If I have to go on travel for my work for extended time, I want that data
able to be recovered.

At this point, I have never had a problem recovering from a mirror setup
(RAID1), and that is why I wanted to use this for her machine.

Again, while I appreciate your assistance and input, I would really like to
pursue the RAID1 option, and then I still need direction towards my original
question. That being, "Can I get RAID1 array going with SATA drives on
this board?"

Thx, and any future direction is appreciated.

Lord Carnage

 

[David Shorthouse]

I'll step in and third the advice. However, I would suggest Acronis to do
regular, scheduled back-ups in the background. The beauty of this program is
that the system partition can be backed-up to file while running- no need to
boot to DOS as other applications like Norton Ghost. I would avoid RAID1 at
all costs, it'll protect from drive failure, but won't protect from file
system corruption as a regular, scheduled back-up will. If you're really
concerned about drive longevity, you could also use a cheap, external drive
enclosure and only power it up when performing back-ups.

Dave

 

[A Little Bit]

Sorry to bother you with such a simplistic question, but I am getting
conflicting information the more I read, thus the more confused I'm
becoming!!!

Anyhoo, I just purchased this board for a new machine I'm building for my
wife. She's been burnt twice in the past year with hard drive crashes, that
have meant her spending time on the internet re-acquiring her recipes, mp3s,
other work research, etc, etc...

My suggestion is to buy a DVD burner and back the data up. Burners and the
blanks they use are very cheap these days.

 

[Len]

OK, this is from memory as I do not use SATA yet on my P4P800 Dlx... It
seems to me that a recent BIOS upgrade (maybe 1010?) enabled SATA RAID 1 on
this board. It did not have that capability "out of the box". You might
want to check ASUS website to verify but if I remember correctly this did
happen.

Here is a blurb from the ASUS site:

ICH5R with Integrated SATA and RAID 0,1
Intel is the world's first chipset maker to integrate Serial ATA (SATA) and
RAID 0, 1 functions into the South Bridge. The latest ICH5R chipset now
delivers 150MB/s fast data transfer (SATA) and striping performance to
enhance computing efficiency.

FWIW,
Len

 

[Slim Pickings]

I am using this board with Raid 1 on IDE drives, the manual indicates
that you can't have a Raid 1 array on the Sata drives. I have no
problems with the IDE Raid 1 Array.

 

[Eric]

Why not use the backup utility that comes with XP to automatically schedule
backups to a 2nd hard drive?

So forget RAID, just put in two IDE drives. You can schedule the backups to
automatically run and backup files or folders or the entire drive of your
choosing. Schedule it to run every night at 2:00 AM.

Your wife does nothing, you only configure it once, and you don't need to
worry about RAID 1 - which probably adds more complexity to your backup
situation than needed.

 

[Slim Pickings]

Len is correct, in November the Intel ICH5R revision -005 began
support of SATA Raid 1. I'm not sure how you can be sure you have this
chipset on your P4P800 Dlx.