A7N8X-Deluxe SATA and RAID0

[rmayton]

My RAID

I just replaced my IDE drives with 2 SATA (Seagate 300GB) drives, and
plan to use one of the IDE drives in an external Firewire/USB
enclosure. I got them running just fine, but the SATA RAID controller
gave me a lot of trouble. When I pressed "F6" to load SATA driver
during the WinXP install, there was no response (I tried several
times). I did eventually get another chance to load the driver (I
downloaded the latest from Asus) because the install program got to a
screen saying windows did not detect any drives, press "S" to load
third party drivers.
Performance in the game I am playing (I reinstalled it from scratch and
copied back the saved game files, it was running just fine on my
Western Digital IDE drive) is very choppy and it seems the drive
intermitantly struggles, so I wonder if I screwed something up in the
configuration (since RAID0 is supposed to improve performance).
Now, when I am instructed at boot to press F4 to enter SATA RAID
interface, I press F4 and nothing happens (the boot sequence just keeps
going until windows is loaded (again, tried many times).
I think what I want to do now is remove the RAID0 and just use the two
SATA drives without RAID. Any help would be appreciated!


My system:
Athlon 3000XP
1GB 3200 RAM
2 Seagate 300GB SATA Drives
Pioneer DVD player/burner
Gigabyte GeForce 6800

 

[Ben Pope]

My RAID

I just replaced my IDE drives with 2 SATA (Seagate 300GB) drives, and
plan to use one of the IDE drives in an external Firewire/USB
enclosure. I got them running just fine, but the SATA RAID controller
gave me a lot of trouble. When I pressed "F6" to load SATA driver
during the WinXP install, there was no response (I tried several
times). I did eventually get another chance to load the driver (I
downloaded the latest from Asus) because the install program got to a
screen saying windows did not detect any drives, press "S" to load
third party drivers.
Performance in the game I am playing (I reinstalled it from scratch and
copied back the saved game files, it was running just fine on my
Western Digital IDE drive) is very choppy and it seems the drive
intermitantly struggles, so I wonder if I screwed something up in the
configuration (since RAID0 is supposed to improve performance).

Lots of people seem to thnk that RAID0 improves performance.

The truth is that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

On a desktop system, it rarely improves it noticeably, and for the
hassle factor, I think too many people bother.

Now, when I am instructed at boot to press F4 to enter SATA RAID
interface, I press F4 and nothing happens (the boot sequence just keeps
going until windows is loaded (again, tried many times).

Do you have a Logitech, MS or other keyboard with an F-Lock function?
On my keyboard on my A7N8X Deluxe, I *think* it ignored the F-Keys until
I hit F-Lock.

I think what I want to do now is remove the RAID0 and just use the two
SATA drives without RAID. Any help would be appreciated!

If you don't need the data, thats easy... if you do... I suspect you can
whack it on one of your "spare" drives?

Ben