P4C800-E Deluxe Multi-Raid question

[Darren]

Hi, I'm planning out a new system and was thinking about this for my IDE
setup:

2 x WesternDigital Raptor 10,000rpm 36G using Onboard Raid 0 (C: Drive)
2 x WesternDigital Caviar 7200rpm 120G using Onboard Raid 0 (D: Drive)
1 40gig maxtor hard drive on standard IDE controller (E: Drive)
1 DVD burner on standard IDE controller (F: Drive)
1 CD burner on standard IDE controller (G: Drive)

Is this possible? I'm not sure if I understand the capabilities of the
onboard raid, and what asus means by "multi-raid".

If this isn't possible then what is? Basically I'm just looking to maximize
my hard disk performance without having to buy a separate raid controller
card.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Lasse Lundberg]

2 x WesternDigital Raptor 10,000rpm 36G using Onboard Raid 0 (C: Drive)
2 x WesternDigital Caviar 7200rpm 120G using Onboard Raid 0 (D: Drive)
1 40gig maxtor hard drive on standard IDE controller (E: Drive)
1 DVD burner on standard IDE controller (F: Drive)
1 CD burner on standard IDE controller (G: Drive)

yes you can....you will need to attach all wd disks on the promise
controller, here you will be able to define 2 raid0 arays, easily !

on the southbridge you will then attach the rest, dvd, cd, 40gig

with this setup however you will run into a little speed bump since the
promise controller only has 3 ports (2xsata, and 1xpata) so lets say you
connect the raptors on the sata connection, and the caviars on the pata
cabel, then the raptor will run full speed and have a channel each, the
caviars will have to share port/channel and this will slow it down a bit.
also all data has to go through the pci, which has limeted bandwith so it
will have to share bandwith with what ever you have in your pci slots, if
you dont have much i not a problem, but if you do have a soundcard, or
tvcard (this can really hog bandwith) then you will see a slight performande
degradation (not bad though, but not optimal)

now another possibility that i havent tried, is to attach your raptors onto
the southbridge sata connections and make a raid on the southbride (it
supports raid like the promise but only on the sata ports) this will give
you best speed on the raptors, then connect you caviars to the promise sata
connectors (with pata to sata converters) this would give the best speed on
the raid drives, but im not shure if the southbridge will accept anything on
its pata connections....so im not shure you will be able to mount
dvd/cd/40gig on the pata....maybe someone else can enlighten you.

the good thing about the southbridge raid is that the southbridge has alot
more bandwith between the northbridge/cpu so even if you have alot of stuff
in your machine....the southbridge will offer the best performance.

Lasse