Asus P4P800 Deluxe and RAID

[Jim and Kay Autrey]

I've read in reviews of this motherboard that IDE RAID is slow and consumes
a high CPU utilization:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDg0

This board has everything I need. Has anyone heard if the RAID problems have
been fixed?

 

[Ken Fox]

I've read in reviews of this motherboard that IDE RAID is slow and consumes
a high CPU utilization:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDg0

This board has everything I need. Has anyone heard if the RAID problems have
been fixed?

I have no prior experience using RAID setups, hence nothing to compare the
P4P800 Dlx to in this regard. I have 4 HDs in my system, 2 off the main IDE
channel and 2 off the IDE RAID in RAID 1 format with one disk per channel.
Both RAID disks are Maxtor 160gig 7200RPM 8MB buffer drives. I'm not a RAID
expert, but I do think that the proper use for RAID is for data, not your
operating system or program files. The RAID disks in my box therefore are
mirroring jpgs and data files. In this type of useage I don't find the RAID
to be any slower than if I simply had a single data disk off the main IDE
channel, as in my most recent previous system.

I don't know if this helps, but I do think this is a helluva board.

ken

 

[Jim Autrey]

I plan to use 4 80 GB hard drives in RAID 0 + 1. Supposedly, you get faster
data throughput from the hard drive and data security. If any one drive
fails, its data is on another drive and you simply replace the bad drive.

However, from the website mentioned below, it appears there's a problem with
the RAID for this particular motherboard. CPU utilization is high (60%) when
the drives are being read or written to.

I've sent an online request to ASUS tech support. Will post their reply
if/when I get one.

 

[Len]

I have the same MB and am running 2 20GB IBM drives in RAID 0 on the VIA
controler. Although some have mentioned problems with this controler I have
had none. It was a tad slow (maybe more than a tad) compared to other RAID
0 options. However, the last driver update seemed to help this... at least
according to Sandra 2003.

Using Aide32 Disk Benchmark plugin I am seeing 8% max CPU usage and an
average of 3%. This is with "Buffered Read" at and average of 88.8MB/s
throughput. This does not seem to be high to me... my old HPT 372 RAID 0
setup was much more of a "hog" on the CPU then this controler.

YYMV, FWIW
Len

 

[Jim Autrey]

Check out the following thread on VIA's forum:
http://forums.viaarena.com/messagev...;threadid=42499
You'll find users are having a serious problem with IDE RAID.

 

[Slim Pickings]

I'm using this mainboard running Raid 1 on the IDE ports, XP pro,
there is no problem with it at all.

 

[EDUARDO Mario]

Hi,

Did you remove the power connector from the ide master drive ?
what happens on your system ? Mine is unusable and after 5 minutes
a frozen GUI.