How to set up RAID 0+1 on P4C800E-DLX MB -using 4 SATA HDD's & 2 ATA133 HHD?

[Data Wing]

I am about to pull my hair out! I have bought all new rig and need
some help. Is the Intel 82801EB southbridge controller converted into
a 82801ER upon installation of the Intel Application Accelerator Raid
Edition ver. 2.0 drivers? And is that RAID Controller on this MB
mutually exclusive to the use of the other on board RAID controller,
(The Promise 378RAID_100137.zip drivers)

I am trying to set up a RAID multiple array using all 4 RAID ports on
this MB as well as the Promise Controller (on board) & the Intel on
board Southbridge (82801ER) Raid controller. the BIOS is only
recognizing the 2 SATA HDD's plugged into the MB at "SATA 1" and "SATA
2", which are mirrored as one C: drive. I have tried downloading the
Intel Raid drivers onto a floppy being iaar2_floppy.exe containing
(iaStor.cat, iaStor.inf, Txtsetup.oem) from asus site as well as the
Promise Raid drivers (378RAID_100137.zip) and loading them from
floppies at the F6 to load during the re-installation of the Win xp
Pro o.s. which will not let me delete the array in the hopes of
setting up the array I want (2 sets of 3 HDD's, or 3 sets of 2 HDD's,
with ea. set being striped together and then mirrored as a group).
Has anybody out there configured this MB with 6 (six) HDD's, filling
up all SATA connectors on the MB and also using the Intel 82801ER
Southbridge ATA 133 connector with 2 HDD's on the 80 connector (one as
master & one as slave?

My rig is all new components, which is:
MB: Asus P4C800E- Deluxe
Case: Coolermaster Preatorian PAC-T01-E1 with Antec True 430 ATX12V
PSU
CPU: P4 3Ghz. - 800 Mhz, FSB (w/ Coolermaster aftermarket Heatsink /
Fan)
Memory: Kingston 3200/400DDR (512 x 2)in slots 1 and 4
4 (four): Seagate SATA 160G 7200 RPM Hard Disk Drives (HDD's)
2 (two): Samsung EIDE 160G 7200 RPM 133ATA HDD's
Optorite 8X DVD Burner
Sapphire 9200 Radeon 8x AGP video card (by ATI)
1.44 floppy
Sceptre 19" TFT LCD flat panel display
Any help much appreciated!

 

[DanO]

You can't create a raid array between the Intel SATA ports and the Promise
SATA ports. At least not in hardware. You could try using software based
raid within Windows, but I'm not sure how well that would work.

If you really want to use all 4 SATA drives in a RAID set, I would recommend
buying an add-in SATA Raid Controller card capable of RAID 5. By doing so,
you would only lose 160 GB of storage as opposed to 320 GB (25% vs 50%.)

 

[Tim]

And... you will have degraded write performance with raid 5.

 

[DanO]

How so? A good hardware based Raid 5 controller with large amounts of
onboard cache should be pretty quick at splitting the data up amongst the
drives and computing the parity data needed for redundancy. The drives
should still be the limiting factor, IMHO.

Do you have some data to the contrary?

 

[Leythos]

How so? A good hardware based Raid 5 controller with large amounts of
onboard cache should be pretty quick at splitting the data up amongst the
drives and computing the parity data needed for redundancy. The drives
should still be the limiting factor, IMHO.

Do you have some data to the contrary?

I think that he was talking about R5 in general.

R5 is great for random data, but a mirror is better for sequential data,
in general.

Writes in R5 take longer than in a MIRROR (depending on the controller)
and longer than a single drive.

Reads in R5 are faster due to the data being split across many drives
and offering more chance of a head being able to get to the data
quicker.

 

[Data Wing]

How so? A good hardware based Raid 5 controller with large amounts of
onboard cache should be pretty quick at splitting the data up amongst the
drives and computing the parity data needed for redundancy. The drives
should still be the limiting factor, IMHO.

Do you have some data to the contrary?

I guess Timn doesn't have any data to contraindicate that your going
to lose (much if any) data write speed if I set up a RAID 5 by buying
a (PCI slot) Raid 5 controller card and setting up Raid 5 using the 4
SATA ports on this MB. I don't reall think I'm going to loose much
write speed if I did that. BUT, what is RAID 5? I now own 6 new 160G
hard drives because of my misunderstanding on how this MB RAID 0+1
gets set up. Would you recommend re-installing over XP Pro Svc Pck 1a
that is currently set up as RAID 1 as a single C; drive on "RAID 1"
and "RAID 2" ports on this MB? If any one can shed some light on
exactly how I can use these HDD's on this MB, I have the following 4
(four) Seagate SATA 160G 7200 RPM and 2 (two) Samsung 160G 133 ATA (I
assume ther'e EIDE) connected to RAID ATA/133 40 pin conncetor (for
use with the Promise PDC 20378 on board controller). I am desperate
for help regarding this. I am trying to build a server for my office.

 

[jim]

"DanO" <[email protected]> wrote in message
I guess Timn doesn't have any data to contraindicate that your going
to lose (much if any) data write speed if I set up a RAID 5 by buying
a (PCI slot) Raid 5 controller card and setting up Raid 5 using the 4
SATA ports on this MB. I don't reall think I'm going to loose much
write speed if I did that. BUT, what is RAID 5? I now own 6 new 160G
hard drives

A good hardware RAID controller like one at www.3ware.com running RAID 5 is
your best and highest performance solution.

because of my misunderstanding on how this MB RAID 0+1
gets set up. Would you recommend re-installing over XP Pro Svc Pck 1a
that is currently set up as RAID 1 as a single C; drive on "RAID 1"
and "RAID 2" ports on this MB? If any one can shed some light on
exactly how I can use these HDD's on this MB, I have the following 4
(four) Seagate SATA 160G 7200 RPM

Use the 4 Seagates in RAID 5 and put the two Samsungs off the mobo's
controllers in RAID 1 for less intense disk I/O usage or better sell the
Samsungs.

 

[Data Wing]

A good hardware RAID controller like one at www.3ware.com running RAID 5 is
your best and highest performance solution.
Use the 4 Seagates in RAID 5 and put the two Samsungs off the mobo's
controllers in RAID 1 for less intense disk I/O usage or better sell the
Samsungs.

JIM: So what you are saying is that with this MB (P4C800-E DLX), I
could buy a high end Raid 5 Controller and be able to use these 4
identical SATA Barracudas (160G - 7200 RPM) on this MB? Is that RAID
5 contoller a PCI slot card? If so, would all SATA 4 HDD's be
connected off that controller card? If not, what hardware would go
where? Would I still use on board Intel or on board Promise Raid ?
I NOW know I can't use BOTH of the on board Intel Raid and the on
board Promise RAID subsystems at the same time on this MB. They are
mutually exclusive. NOTHING in the ASUS manual or ASUS website about
these being mutually exclusive! This MB manual is very poor on
anything other than straight RAID 0 or straight RAID 1 with just a
couple of hard drives. But what gives with all these connectors on
this MB? ASUS needs to tell people they can't use all the SATA
connestors and the PROMISE ata 133 connectors at the same time on this
MB! Am I right? Appareltly they are options. If I set up RAID 5
using all 4 SATA HDD's as you suggest on this MB, which SATA
connectors on this MB would be used, and would the on board Intel Raid
drivers and/or the on board Promise Raid drivers need to be installed?
I am considering your suggested (Raid 5 w/ all 4 SATA HDD's) solution
but need to know exactly how that would be connected and configured on
this MB before I spend any more money. I have already spent over
$3,300.00 on this system so far, and from what I am going to have left
over I will probably have enough to build a 2d system (which I don't
really need). I have been trying to figure this out for about 2
months. Lastly could you please shed some light on what is RAID 5?
Thank you for your help.

 

[snoopy]

According to the following link you should be able to use your six drives.
Two on Intel (SATA1 & SATA2) and then four on the Promise controller. See
page 5-25 in the manual for the Promise info. See page 5-33 for the Intel
setup info.

http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=85205

 

[DanO]

Data,
You can use all of the connectors on the MB at the same time, but you
can NOT create one giant raid set using all of the connectors at once.

The two Intel IDE connectors can support up to 4 devices total, but none in
a RAID Array. These IDE ports can be used for Hard Drives or Optical
Drives.

The two Intel SATA connectors can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with two SATA
Hard Drives (1 per connector.)

The Promise Controller can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with its two SATA
connectors (same as the Intel above.) You can also create a RAID 0 or RAID
1 array with the single Promise IDE port (two IDE drives on one ribbon
cable, one Master one Slave.)

With the Promise Controller, you might be able to perform RAID 0+1 as well,
using 4 drives (2 SATA in RAID 0 + 2 IDE in RAID 0.) Basically you'd have a
mirror set of two RAID 0 arrays.

RAID 0 = Disk Striping (no protection, but extra speed)

RAID 1 = Disk Mirroring (protection, but only 1/2 total drive space
available)

RAID 5 = an array of at least 3 drives, where any one drive can fail and no
data will be lost. The failed drive can then be replaced and its data
recreated from the "parity" data on the remaining drives. (extra speed,
protection, and efficient use of disk space.)

DanO

 

[DanO]

Also, if you buy an add-in RAID5 PCI controller card, you will use none of
the MB's SATA connectors. All drives will be connected to the new card.
These cards are pretty expensive.

 

[DanO]

Data,
You can use all of the connectors on the MB at the same time, but you
can NOT create one giant raid set using all of the connectors at once.

The two Intel IDE connectors can support up to 4 devices total, but none in
a RAID Array. These IDE ports can be used for Hard Drives or Optical
Drives.

The two Intel SATA connectors can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with two SATA
Hard Drives (1 per connector.)

The Promise Controller can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with its two SATA
connectors (same as the Intel above.) You can also create a RAID 0 or RAID
1 array with the single Promise IDE port (two IDE drives on one ribbon
cable, one Master one Slave.)

With the Promise Controller, you might be able to perform RAID 0+1 as well,
using 4 drives (2 SATA in RAID 0 + 2 IDE in RAID 0.) Basically you'd have a
mirror set of two RAID 0 arrays.

RAID 0 = Disk Striping (no protection, but extra speed)

RAID 1 = Disk Mirroring (protection, but only 1/2 total drive space
available)

RAID 5 = an array of at least 3 drives, where any one drive can fail and no
data will be lost. The failed drive can then be replaced and its data
recreated from the "parity" data on the remaining drives. (extra speed,
protection, and efficient use of disk space.)

DanO

 

[Leythos]

I just want to point out a couple things here about RAID:

1) RAID 5 - needs at least three drives, 5 or more seems to be the
optimum performance point. R5 is designed for fast READS, but takes
longer on writes than a single drive.

2) RAID - NEVER SPLIT RAID ARRAYS ACROSS CONTROLLERS. If you split a R5
array across controllers with more than one drive on a second controller
and you loose either controller you loose everything in the array. I've
seen so many people install large arrays across two controllers, loose a
controller, or some other issue, and that takes 2 or more drives out,
which means you loose it all.

3) If you are doing something that you really need R5 for, where you
need the performance of it for an application or DB, get a RX6000 or
RX8000 that is designed to handle ATA133 drives in ANY RAID
configuration you want and even has a cache for enhanced performance.

4) The built-in RAID on these low-end motherboards is designed for one
thing, low-end RAID solutions. Meaning they are doing it for RAID 1
mirrors to protect the OS/Data, or stripes for fast data access for
video/audio editing. If you are doing R5 you should be using a better
method than 2 or 3 controllers on a low-end motherboard.

Promise makes several RAID controllers designed for R5, the RX-4000,
6000, 8000, and they work very nicely.

 

[Data Wing]

Data,
You can use all of the connectors on the MB at the same time, but you
can NOT create one giant raid set using all of the connectors at once.

The two Intel IDE connectors can support up to 4 devices total, but none in
a RAID Array. These IDE ports can be used for Hard Drives or Optical
Drives.

The two Intel SATA connectors can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with two SATA
Hard Drives (1 per connector.)

The Promise Controller can perform RAID 0 or RAID 1 with its two SATA
connectors (same as the Intel above.) You can also create a RAID 0 or RAID
1 array with the single Promise IDE port (two IDE drives on one ribbon
cable, one Master one Slave.)

With the Promise Controller, you might be able to perform RAID 0+1 as well,
using 4 drives (2 SATA in RAID 0 + 2 IDE in RAID 0.) Basically you'd have a
mirror set of two RAID 0 arrays.

RAID 0 = Disk Striping (no protection, but extra speed)

RAID 1 = Disk Mirroring (protection, but only 1/2 total drive space
available)

RAID 5 = an array of at least 3 drives, where any one drive can fail and no
data will be lost. The failed drive can then be replaced and its data
recreated from the "parity" data on the remaining drives. (extra speed,
protection, and efficient use of disk space.)

DanO

DAN-O:
Thanks for your help. I think I'll just buy the 3ware 8506-4 LP
Controller card. I think it will install in any PCI slot and I can
plug the 4 SATA 160G HDD's directly into the card. It will support
RAID 5. According to 3ware site, Raid 5 is mirroring and striping and
I will only lose the equivalent of 1 drive worth of data storage
space. So with 4 - 160 G HDD's I will still have (3 x 160 =) 480 G of
data storage space. It irks me that I paid so much for this MOBO and
my primary function will be from an add on Controller Card (which is
going to cost $342.00!). I probably could have saved some money by
buying a mainboard that didn't have on board RAID, which I will end up
not using. I am disappointed at ASUS for not indicating clearly in
the specs and in their manual that you can't set up a multi SATA HDD
RAID above Raid 0 or Raid 1.(Without adding a PCI controller card.)
Uggh! --- BUT thanks very much for your help.

 

[DanO]

You're welcome. Good luck with the RAID5 setup. I wish I could afford it
myself.

DanO

 

[Data Wing]

DAN-O:
Thanks for your help. I think I'll just buy the 3ware 8506-4 LP
Controller card. I think it will install in any PCI slot and I can
plug the 4 SATA 160G HDD's directly into the card. It will support
RAID 5. According to 3ware site, Raid 5 is mirroring and striping and
I will only lose the equivalent of 1 drive worth of data storage
space. So with 4 - 160 G HDD's I will still have (3 x 160 =) 480 G of
data storage space. It irks me that I paid so much for this MOBO and
my primary function will be from an add on Controller Card (which is
going to cost $342.00!). I probably could have saved some money by
buying a mainboard that didn't have on board RAID, which I will end up
not using. I am disappointed at ASUS for not indicating clearly in
the specs and in their manual that you can't set up a multi SATA HDD
RAID above Raid 0 or Raid 1.(Without adding a PCI controller card.)
Uggh! --- BUT thanks very much for your help.

Well, actually, before I jump off and buy the $340.00 3ware RAID 5
card, I think I will try one last thing with this MOBO. Do I
understand you correctly, Dan, that I can set up RAID 0+1 (Same thing
as RAID 10) with 4 drives as follows: 2 ATA 133 HDD's on the 80
connector ribbon on board Promise controller, and 2 additional SATA
HDD's plugges into the ports labeled as :"SATA_RAID 1" and "SATA_RAID
2", which are described on pg 2-25 of the ASUS manual? Yes, that's
one big long question. Sorry. If that;s true, do you think that I
could (or should) re-install Win.XP Pro and do the "F6" bit,
installing the on board Promise Raid controller drivers, and try to
set it up that way. Would that support 2 sets of 2, with 2 striped,
and then mirror those 2, making RAID 0+1? Any suggestions? Anybody
out there? Dan? Tim?

 

[DanO]

Data,
I believe that is possible, but I am not 100% positive. If you have 4
drives laying around, you could just try to configure them within the
Promise BIOS Raid Setup Utility. You'll know right away whether or not you
can do it, even prior to installing the OS. Either the Promise BIOS will
let you, or not.

DanO

 

[Data Wing]

You're welcome. Good luck with the RAID5 setup. I wish I could afford it

This is an update as of 05/15/04 to my problem: If you want to use 4
SATA drives running RAID on this MB be WARNED: you can't unless you
get an add on PCI Raid card. The on board RAID is either the promise
controller or the Intel controller, but not both. So you can use
either the on board RAID 1 and RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB or you
can use the SATA RAID 1 and SATA RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB, but
you CAN'T use all 4 SATA plugs on this MB. THANKS ASUS for telling
us! NOT! I ended up having to buy a third party PCI RAID controller
card and plugging all four of my SATA drives into it to use them
together in a RAID array. I got the 3ware Escalade 8506-4LP and have
all four SATA drives plugged into this card in RAID 5, I'm not even
using any of the on board RAID controllers. This info isn't anywhere
on the ASUS web site or the manual about this MB. BEWARE of
incomplete info from ASUS. With the 3ware add on card (at an
additional cost of $305.00) it works okay, except for an aggravating
error every time I boot up that says "your system recovered for a
serious error" about some non specific device driver.

My rig is:
OS: Win. XP Pro. Svc. Pck. 1A
MB: Asus P4C800E- Deluxe
Case: Coolermaster Preatorian PAC-T01-E1 with Antec True 430 ATX12V
PSU
CPU: P4 3Ghz. - 800 Mhz, FSB (w/ Coolermaster aftermarket Heatsink /
Fan)
Memory: Kingston 3200/400DDR (512 x 2)in slots 1 and 4
4 (four): Seagate SATA 160G 7200 RPM Hard Disk Drives (HDD's)
3 ware add on PCI card: Escalade 8506-4LP RAID controller card
Optorite 8X DVD Burner
Sapphire 9200 Radeon 8x AGP video card (by ATI)
Mitsumi Model # D359M3D 1.44 floppy (black)
Sceptre 19" TFT LCD flat panel display

 

[Data Wing]

DEAR EVERYBODY:

I was the original poster on this thread and want everybody to know
what I finally did to resolve my problem (explained in detail in the
above thread.
This is an update as of 05/21/04 to my problem: If you want to use 4
SATA drives running RAID on this MB be WARNED: you can't unless you
get an add on PCI Raid card. The on board RAID is either the promise
controller or the Intel controller, but not both. So you can use
either the on board RAID 1 and RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB or you
can use the SATA RAID 1 and SATA RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB, but
you CAN'T use all 4 SATA plugs on this MB. THANKS ASUS for telling
us! NOT! I ended up having to buy a third party PCI RAID controller
card and plugging all four of my SATA drives into it to use them
together in a RAID array. I got the 3ware Escalade 8506-4LP and have
all four SATA drives plugged into this card in RAID 5, I'm not even
using any of the on board RAID controllers. This info isn't anywhere
on the ASUS web site or the manual about this MB. BEWARE of
incomplete info from ASUS. With the 3ware add on card (at an
additional cost of $305.00) it works okay, except for an aggravating
error every time I boot up that says "your system recovered for a
serious error" about some non specific device driver.

 

[Data Wing]

You're welcome. Good luck with the RAID5 setup. I wish I could afford it
myself.

DanO

Dear DanO and other interested readers: (from Datawing - original
poster):
This is an update as of 06/05/04 to my problem: If you want to use 4
SATA drives running RAID on this MB be WARNED: you can't unless you
get an add on PCI Raid card. The on board RAID is either the promise
controller or the Intel controller, but not both. So you can use
either the on board RAID 1 and RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB or you
can use the SATA RAID 1 and SATA RAID 2 plugs coming off the MB, but
you CAN'T use all 4 SATA plugs on this MB. THANKS ASUS for telling
us! NOT! I ended up having to buy a third party PCI RAID controller
card and plugging all four of my SATA drives into it to use them
together in a RAID array. I got the 3ware Escalade 8506-4LP and have
all four SATA drives plugged into this card in RAID 5, I'm not even
using any of the on board RAID controllers. This info isn't anywhere
on the ASUS web site or the manual about this MB. BEWARE of
incomplete info from ASUS. With the 3ware add on card (at an
additional cost of $305.00) it worked okay for about 2 weeks, except
for an error every time I booted up that says "your system recovered
from a serious error" about some non specific device driver. Now, as
of last week, it won't even boot up, giving a "STOP" error BSOD. I've
spent over $3600.00 on this rig and it won'r even boot up. Don't know
what to do.

My rig is:
OS: Win. XP Pro. Svc. Pck. 1A
MB: Asus P4C800E- Deluxe
Case: Coolermaster Preatorian PAC-T01-E1 with Antec True 430 ATX12V
PSU
CPU: P4 3Ghz. - 800 Mhz, FSB (w/ Coolermaster aftermarket Heatsink /
Fan)
Memory: Kingston 3200/400DDR (512 x 2)in slots 1 and 4
4 (four): Seagate SATA 160G 7200 RPM Hard Disk Drives (HDD's)
3 ware add on PCI card: Escalade 8506-4LP RAID controller card
Optorite 8X DVD Burner
Sapphire 9200 Radeon 8x AGP video card (by ATI)
Mitsumi Model # D359M3D 1.44 floppy (black)
Sceptre 19" TFT LCD flat panel display