RAID and SATA

[David Lewis]

Hi to all

I recently bought a new computer with an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard.It
has "support" for 4 SATA drives .My original intention was to use two SATA
drives in a RAID array which now I have scrapped in preference for 4 single
NON RAID SATA drives.

OK, but the vendor now tells me that 2 of the onboard controllers can only
be used for RAID so I would need to either daisy chain the non raid drives
to install all 4 , or buy a separate PCI SATA controller card.

1)Could this be correct i.e. would 2 of the Mobo's SATA controllers be only
for RAID?Or perhaps once set up for RAID you can't reverse it?
2)Don't you lose performance by plugging an SATA drive into a PCI bus?
3) By daisy chaining the SATA drives I may as well have a parallel ATA (IDE)
set up?

Thanks for any advice

 

[JBM]

Hi to all

I recently bought a new computer with an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard.It
has "support" for 4 SATA drives .My original intention was to use two SATA
drives in a RAID array which now I have scrapped in preference for 4 single
NON RAID SATA drives.

OK, but the vendor now tells me that 2 of the onboard controllers can only
be used for RAID so I would need to either daisy chain the non raid drives
to install all 4 , or buy a separate PCI SATA controller card.

1)Could this be correct i.e. would 2 of the Mobo's SATA controllers be only
for RAID?Or perhaps once set up for RAID you can't reverse it?
2)Don't you lose performance by plugging an SATA drive into a PCI bus?
3) By daisy chaining the SATA drives I may as well have a parallel ATA (IDE)
set up?

Thanks for any advice

I have that same board. In the BIOS you can
set the RAID controller for RAID or NON-RAID (choices are RAID or IDE). I
would have
to reboot to tell where the setting is exactly but
it should be easy to find

 

[David Lewis]

I have that same board. In the BIOS you can
set the RAID controller for RAID or NON-RAID (choices are RAID or
IDE). I would have
to reboot to tell where the setting is exactly but
it should be easy to find

When you say "IDE" do you mean you can configure in the BIOS to have 4
single non RAID SATA Drives.Some confusion here as I think the mobo also
accepts ? 4 ordinary "IDE" (parallel ATA) drives.

The pc was set up to have the RAID array but if I am understanding you this
should be chageable in the BIOS?

Thanks for help.

 

[Bob Willard]

Hi to all

I recently bought a new computer with an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard.It
has "support" for 4 SATA drives .My original intention was to use two SATA
drives in a RAID array which now I have scrapped in preference for 4 single
NON RAID SATA drives.

OK, but the vendor now tells me that 2 of the onboard controllers can only
be used for RAID so I would need to either daisy chain the non raid drives
to install all 4 , or buy a separate PCI SATA controller card.

1)Could this be correct i.e. would 2 of the Mobo's SATA controllers be only
for RAID?Or perhaps once set up for RAID you can't reverse it?
2)Don't you lose performance by plugging an SATA drive into a PCI bus?
3) By daisy chaining the SATA drives I may as well have a parallel ATA (IDE)
set up?

Thanks for any advice

SATA does not support daisy-chaining. SATA is a pure point-to-point
connection, from one host to one device (e.g., a HD).

 

[Bob Harris]

I have an older ASUS P4S8X, which supports up to 2 SATA drives on a RAID
controller. By default it links the two drives into one big drive. The
other easy option is to link them as mirrors. However, it also supports
separate drives that are NOT linked in any awy. To achieve this sort of
independent configuration, chose the custom setup (or advanced setup or
similar). By the way, the RAID configuration is not really a BIOS function.
Rather it is something that you set via the RAID controller, which can be
accessed during the power-on-self-testing. For my controller I hit CRTL-F
when it starts displaying info about the FastTrack controller.

 

[David Lewis]

I have an older ASUS P4S8X, which supports up to 2 SATA drives on a
RAID controller. By default it links the two drives into one big
drive. The other easy option is to link them as mirrors. However,
it also supports separate drives that are NOT linked in any awy. To
achieve this sort of independent configuration, chose the custom
setup (or advanced setup or similar). By the way, the RAID
configuration is not really a BIOS function. Rather it is something
that you set via the RAID controller, which can be accessed during
the power-on-self-testing. For my controller I hit CRTL-F when it
starts displaying info about the FastTrack controller. "David Lewis"

OK and Thanks.There may be some possibility that the newer boards don't have
this function to convert SATA raid controller to two single SATA controllers

 

[Guest]

The asus p4c900 actually has 4 sata connections on the MoBo... it is possible to put 4 sata drives on it, But you need to work it under XP, and get the apropriate driver from asus

Good luck