Raid 5 array with 6 discs

[gjvrieze]

HI
i am setting up a raid 5 array across 6 Seagate 320gb sata 3.0 on a Asus P5B-D, but when i go into the raid controller, i seem to be limited to 4 drives in raid 5, and i want all 6 in raid 5. Is this a limit, or am i doing something wrong???

[swatbat]

Want to say that that board has 6 total sata ports. 4 ports are on the intel chipset and the other 2 are on a seperate controller. Someone elce may want to verify this for me though. Anyway if that is the case your only way to do a raid 5 with all the disks would be a software based one.

Personaly I really don't like the idea of running a raid off the onboard controllers though. I've just seen to many motherboards die over the years. While raid cards do fail it is just not as often.

[gjvrieze]

this board has two controllers, one has the eSata port and another sata port, and then the intel raid controller has 6, and it was my understanding that i could run raid 5 across 6 drives on this controller.

[swatbat]

this board has two controllers, one has the eSata port and another sata port, and then the intel raid controller has 6, and it was my understanding that i could run raid 5 across 6 drives on this controller.

Might be a limitation of that onboard raid. Have you checked the documentation that came with the board? Raid 5 can run on 6 drives easy but the controller might not be able to handle it.

[drizzt81]

I remember this question coming up before. At this point intel is limiting their on-board controllers to 4 disks in R5:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1098979
in particular this:
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1029956144&postcount=5