Multiple drives w/ 2005 motherboards...

[Snake Djip]

Hi,

I'm looking into configuring a Media Center PC. Since I'll be ripping
a lot of my DVDs onto the hard-drives, I've decided to go with a
RAID-5 implementation.

I'm considering the Abit AA8 3rd eye motherboard, which has 4 SATA
connectors.

I imagine that this means that I can connect up to 4 SATA drives.
With "Tom's hardware"'s piece on how to convert XP Pro to use software
RAID, that would solve my problem.

My question is : what if I need more than 4 drives ? For example, I'm
planning to buy a full-size tower with plenty of drive bays, and I
expect that at some point I'll be adding hard drives...

I know I could buy an 8-channel controller that would solve that
problem, but I just want someone to tell me for sure the answers to
the following questions :

1- with 4 SATA connectors on a motherboard, how many drives (max) can
I connect, and if it's more that 4, will software RAID recognize the
drives ?

2- If I add a 4-channel controller in a PCI slot, can I now connect 4
more drives, e.g. can I connect drives BOTH to the motherboard
connectors AND the controller to have (at most?) 8 drives available ?
If so, does software RAID recognize the drives ?

Thanks so much.

 

[Thomas Wendell]

Hi,

I'm looking into configuring a Media Center PC. Since I'll be ripping
a lot of my DVDs onto the hard-drives, I've decided to go with a
RAID-5 implementation.

I'm considering the Abit AA8 3rd eye motherboard, which has 4 SATA
connectors.

I imagine that this means that I can connect up to 4 SATA drives.
With "Tom's hardware"'s piece on how to convert XP Pro to use software
RAID, that would solve my problem.

My question is : what if I need more than 4 drives ? For example, I'm
planning to buy a full-size tower with plenty of drive bays, and I
expect that at some point I'll be adding hard drives...

I know I could buy an 8-channel controller that would solve that
problem, but I just want someone to tell me for sure the answers to
the following questions :

1- with 4 SATA connectors on a motherboard, how many drives (max) can
I connect, and if it's more that 4, will software RAID recognize the
drives ?

That is 4 drives, as SATA doesn't daisychain drives..

2- If I add a 4-channel controller in a PCI slot, can I now connect 4
more drives, e.g. can I connect drives BOTH to the motherboard
connectors AND the controller to have (at most?) 8 drives available ?
If so, does software RAID recognize the drives ?

Thanks so much.

--
Tumppi
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