Which RAID Controller?

[Sentinel]

Hello

I have just bought an Asus P5AD2-E Premium motherboard and was planning to
setup a RAID 1 set with two SATA HDD's. However, it appears that there are
two RAID controllers available on this board.

There's the Intel ICH6R and the Sillicon Image 3114. Is one of these better
for my purposes? Is there any advantages/disadvantages using one over the
other?

Any advice or views would be appreciated.


--

[EzyStvy]

Would imagine one is IDE and the other SATA. SO if you're going with SATA drives it's a non issue.

[Sentinel]

Originally Posted by EzyStvy Would imagine one is IDE and the other SATA. SO if you're going with SATA drives it's a non issue.

Firstly, thanks for replying so quickly to my question! I am amazed! I had this question on an Internet newsgroup for a week without reply.

My confusion about these controllers is because as far as I can tell the Intel ICH6R also offers SATA support with its 4 SATA connectors.

[glc]

Intel ICH6R South Bridge:
- 1 x UltraDMA 100/66/33
- 4 x Serial ATA with Intel Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1 support
Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller:
- 4 x Serial ATA, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 (RAID 5 software patch available, no WHQL)
ITE IDE RAID controller:
- 2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 with JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support

I'd use the ICH6R. If I read the specs right, that board has eight SATA ports.

[Hags]

sorry, not trying to hijack this thread at all, but, what is raid 5 and 10?

[Sentinel]

RAID 5 (Parity RAID)
RAID 5 (Parity RAID) adds fault tolerance to Disk Striping by including parity information
with the data. Parity RAID dedicates the equivalent of one disk for storing parity stripes.
The data and parity information is arranged on the disk array so that parity is written to
different disks. There are at least 3 members to a Parity RAID set. The following example
illustrates how the parity is rotated from disk to disk.
Parity RAID uses less capacity for protection and is the preferred method to reduce the
cost per megabyte for larger installations. Mirroring requires 100% increase in capacity to
protect the data whereas the above example only requires a 50% increase. The required
capacity decreases as the number of disks in the group increases.

[Sentinel]

[QUOTE=gl
I'd use the ICH6R. If I read the specs right, that board has eight SATA ports.[/QUOTE]

Can you say why?

Perhaps I should throw into the mix the fact that I will be using hard drives with NCQ. I believe that one of those RAID controller support that, but I can't remember which.

[glc]

The ICH6R supports NCQ.

[Sentinel]

Originally Posted by glc The ICH6R supports NCQ.

Thanks.

[GRP]

If you are trying to build a fast gaming PC than go with raid 0, This is two hard drives working in tandum with no redundency. So if one drive fails the whole system goes down. You don't need raid 1 unless backup is more important than speed. Raid 1 There are two drives, one is a backup or mirror drive. Raid 1 if one hard drive dies the back up or mirror drive can take over operations until the faulty dirve is replaced. Raid 5 is a compromise between 0 and1. For a home PC go with raid 0. Intall the drivers, included w/motherboard for whichever controller you wish when installing winxp. At the very start of installing win watch the screen for installing 3rd party raid controllers. Choice = Raid 0

[Sentinel]

Originally Posted by GRP If you are trying to build a fast gaming PC than go with raid 0, This is two hard drives working in tandum with no redundency. So if one drive fails the whole system goes down. You don't need raid 1 unless backup is more important than speed. Raid 1 There are two drives, one is a backup or mirror drive. Raid 1 if one hard drive dies the back up or mirror drive can take over operations until the faulty dirve is replaced. Raid 5 is a compromise between 0 and1. For a home PC go with raid 0. Intall the drivers, included w/motherboard for whichever controller you wish when installing winxp. At the very start of installing win watch the screen for installing 3rd party raid controllers. Choice = Raid 0

I considered RAID 0, but decided that I'd prefer data integrity. I guess RAID 10 would be the optimal solution, but I don't want to squeeze 4 HDD's into my mid-sized case!

[glc]

The optimal solution is RAID 5. That's the only raid that I mess with, and I use at least 4 drives.

[cameront]

"Virgin +1 build so be gentle"

Just built one of these yesterday

1x Asus P5AD2-E-Premium PCIE i925XE S7
1x 550 Intel Pentium® 4 LGA 775 CPU
2x 1Gb DDR2 PC4200, 533 MHz, non-ECC
2x 200Gb Western Digital WD2000JD Cavi
1x 250Gb Western Digital Caviar 2500JD - NOT WORKING
1x 128Mb ATI FireGL V3200 128MB DDR PC
1x SilverStone "TEMJIN" J05B (BLACK)
1x NEC ND-3540A Black 16x16 DVD±RW
1x Mitsumi FA404M 1.44 Black FDD+Int
1x 480W Tagan 2Force SLi Ultra Quiet 2
1x Logitech Pilot Optical Mouse Ivory
1x 19" Hyundai ImageQuest L90D+ TFT Mo

The 200Gb WD's are connected as RAID0 through Intel ICH6R - on SATA plugs 1 and 2 (masters)

- worked fine-ish after I discovered that "ctrl l" manual page 5-31 was "ctrl I" and NOT "ctrl L"
- don’t forget the ATX 12V1 small power supply just behind the rear panel supply
- my case is junk - Chinese $#!£ - sorry just had to say this!
- don’t forget to press F6 during windows installation and install the RIAD drives (obtained from supplied drive disc - insert the CD into newly built pc and follow instructions - have floppy ready)
- installing your P4 CPU - its a bit daunting, pushing that leaver down and watching the clamp bracket BEND around the chip - I was convinced that I'd bent every connecting pin on the board, well at least until it machine worked for the first time
- The machine works fine-ish - have manage to remove all the little driver errors from device manager
- oh yes I'm letting windows manage the wireless bit - its a dam sight easier!

!!!!!!!!!!!----THE PROBLEM'S----!!!!!!!!!!!

1) How can I connect my third hard drive as a slave? (backup HDD)
- When I plug it into SATA plug 3 (slave) - the machine just hangs!
- Or is it not possible to connect another stand alone SATA drive to a RAID system?
- Would I be better off buying another HD and setting up a RAID0 +1?

2) During start-up I get a message "Primary Slave Drive - ATAPTI Incompatible” - I assume this to be the DVD - however I ignore it by pressing F1 and it works fine - I could remove the message by disabling the BIOS "F1" function.
- Could I have used the wrong cable or plugged it into the wrong socket or upside down maybe?

3) Have not got ASUS bios UPDATE to work yet!

LET ME KNOW HOW YOUR BUILD GOES

Cameron

[David M]

Wikipedia explains RAID and all the types of configurations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

[glc]

With SATA, there is no such thing as master or slave. One drive per cable.

Try putting the third drive on the Sil3114 controller and make sure the controller is enabled in the main system bios. You will need to install the Sil drivers in Windows before the drive will be recognized in Disk Management, where you can partition and format it for storage.

Use an 80 wire Ultra ATA cable for the DVD burner, connect it to the standard IDE controller (ICH6R, not the ITE), jumper the drive to Cable Select. If this doesn't work, use a standard 40 wire IDE cable and jumper the drive to Master. Turn the ITE controller off in the bios.

[cameront]

Thanks! will try soon

- in mean time Davids link got me to intel (manufacturers of the ICh6r chips) They where good enough to reply to an e-mail
- "I have configured the 2off Western digital 200gb Sata's as Raid 0 - works great.- Can I install the other Sata drive 25ogb and have the system recognise it as a separte drive"

Quote
"Thank you for contacting Intel(R) Technical Support.
Any additional hard drives added after the RAID volume has been created will be recognized as normal hard drives and will have their own letter assignments, i.e. C:\, E:\.
Please do not hesitate to contact us again if you need further assistance.
Sincerely,
Intel Technical Support"

At the least it gives me the confidence to keep trying.

Will be in touch - might be post holiday