I understand that Intel Matrix raid setup can only take 2 harddisks
for one volume. Can I create 2 Matrix raid volumes by hooking up 4
drives to the 4 onboard sata ports? Or, can I create a Matrix raid
volume with 2 hd, then use the third and fourth hd as regular ide
drives?
The mobo I am looking at is Asus P5GDC-V Deluxe
Thanks..
I looked on the Intel site, and that information simply doesn't
exist. That is because the Intel people are lazy, and they
reused the documentation from ICH5, so they wouldn't have to
provide any more details about ICH6. I certainly hope I am wrong
about this, and the info is somewhere. I tried looking at Intel
motherboard documentation, but the required info isn't there either.
I skimmed through the datasheet for the ICH6, and the four ports
in question, appear as separate entities. That means that the
Intel BIOS and Intel driver are in control of the capabilities -
the arrays are software based, and need software to hide the
drives and ports underneath.
About the best you could hope for, is to find a review on the
web somewhere, with some pictures of the setup screen for arrays.
Otherwise, finding a rich person with four drives, who also likes
to post on USENET, is pretty low odds
If you think about it, there are quite a few possible combinations,
given that matrix raid allows RAID 0 and RAID 1 _volumes_ to coexist
on the same pair of drives at the same time. Whether these can be
stacked or not, will require someone to play with them, and only
a reviewer has the time and inclination.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/socket_775-29.html
The picture at the bottom of this page answers your second question -
you can have two single drives plus a two drive array.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/socket_775-31.html
The rest of that article gives the impression you are limited to
max two raid volumes - hard to tell whether that impacts the single
drive capability or not. My guess is, you could matrix a two drive
set (i.e. have a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 on the same two drives) and
still have the other two drives separate. It is just too hard to tell
whether any more complicated configurations are possible.
HTH,
Paul
