8 SATA without using RAID ASUS A8N-SLI

[Terry]

I recently decided to upgrade my system, and would like to get a
motherboard capable of supporting 8 hard drives. The ASUS A8N-SLI
Premium seemed to fit the bill, as it has 8 SATA connections. However,
upon further review, these connections fall into two groups - 4
connections are for normal SATA drive use, and the other 4 connections
are only able to be used for RAID purposes.

What I would ultimately like to do is hook up 8 hard drives without
making any use of RAID. The first set of 4 can be hooked up with no
problem and no RAIDing required, but the second set of 4 will be an
issue. The only solution that I have been able to come up with is to
set up this second set of 4 hard drives as FOUR independent RAID JBOD
arrays, which will give me what I want (basically negate the RAID
effect while fullfilling the RAID requirement of these motherboard
connections).

However, I have looked around and can't find any confirmation that I
can even set up FOUR single-drive RAID JBOD arrays (or even one
single-drive RAID JBOD array, for that matter). Does anyone know if
the configuration I'm describing is possible to set up?

 

[Dave]

I recently decided to upgrade my system, and would like to get a
motherboard capable of supporting 8 hard drives. The ASUS A8N-SLI
Premium seemed to fit the bill, as it has 8 SATA connections. However,
upon further review, these connections fall into two groups - 4
connections are for normal SATA drive use, and the other 4 connections
are only able to be used for RAID purposes.

You'd better double-check that. The way I read the specs (could be wrong)
is that four of the connectors are raid capable. -Dave

 

[fwibbler]

I recently decided to upgrade my system, and would like to get a
motherboard capable of supporting 8 hard drives. The ASUS A8N-SLI
Premium seemed to fit the bill, as it has 8 SATA connections. However,
upon further review, these connections fall into two groups - 4
connections are for normal SATA drive use, and the other 4 connections
are only able to be used for RAID purposes.

What I would ultimately like to do is hook up 8 hard drives without
making any use of RAID. The first set of 4 can be hooked up with no
problem and no RAIDing required, but the second set of 4 will be an
issue. The only solution that I have been able to come up with is to
set up this second set of 4 hard drives as FOUR independent RAID JBOD
arrays, which will give me what I want (basically negate the RAID
effect while fullfilling the RAID requirement of these motherboard
connections).

However, I have looked around and can't find any confirmation that I
can even set up FOUR single-drive RAID JBOD arrays (or even one
single-drive RAID JBOD array, for that matter). Does anyone know if
the configuration I'm describing is possible to set up?

Yes, it is possible.

That board can have up to 8 separate drives, or 2 in RAID and 6 separate, in
fact, just about any configuration that involves between 1 and 8 actual hard
drives.

Quick question, what case do you intend to use that has 8 hard drive bays?

Cheers!