Question about configured RAID on an Abit IP35 Pro

Okay... I seem to have gotten myself into a pickle. I have an abit IP35 Pro mobo. I currently have a 160GB SATA drive as my C drive plugged into SATA1. I have ordered 2 640GB SATA drives that I planned to put into a RAID 1+0 and use as my data drives. I just realized that all 6 SATA ports have to be RAID or not RAID on this mobo. If I turn on raid, I can't use my 160GB drive and I have to rebuild my OS and reinstall all my apps. I can do this, but I would REALLY like to avoid it. Is there any way to set it up so that I can have the single 160GB drive not in an array and the 2 640GB drives in an array? I do have an eSATA port. Can it be converted somehow to support an internal drive? Would it work if I bought a PCI SATA card and moved the 160GB to that? If so, which card would you recommend? Thanks in advance for all the help. Also, if I enable RAID, what will happen to my DVD drive that is plugged into the same controller?

Just to clarify, I tried setting the controller to RAID. It does see the HD, but I get the BSOD during boot up. I tried just reinstalling the OS and loading the RAID drivers using F6, but when I set the BIOS to RAID, it sees the DVD drive, but will not boot to it. I can't figure out why. I verified the boot order and set the optical drive as the first boot device, but it ignores the CD. If I set it back to IDE mode, it will boot from the same CD.

From what I have read, there may be a .reg file that will load the RAID drivers after the fact and then allow you to switch the BIOS and add the data drives, but I can't find the actual file.

Just hook the drives up and boot into windows using your 160gb drive, go into your intel matrix storage manager and create raid array. If you dont have intel matrix storage manager download it or use you mobo disk to install it. ALLEN

I ran into the same problem. Having it set to RAID will cause it to not boot from the internal SATA or IDE CD/DVD drive. It makes no sense....to get around it, I used an external USB CD/DVD drive and it booted from it no problem.

I'm somewhat new to RAID and I only have some experience with two drives in RAID 0 and no other SATA devices connected. First, I'd like to point out that RAID 1+0 requires at least 4 drives. When installing Windows I used an IDE DVDRW drive.

The IP35 Pro has two eSATA connecters at the back which are operated by a separate (JMicron) controller from the internal SATA connections. Perhaps the 160GB drive would be happier connected to one of these or you could connect both 640GB drives via eSATA and still be able to set up RAID 0 or RAID 1. You can get eSATA enclosures or a simple eSATA to SATA cable and you could even route that back into your case.

There's a comment on this item on newegg where someone used the cable to connect an internal drive via eSATA. Other cables have bad reviews so be careful which you choose.

stick your current OS drive on the JMicron & load the Intel RAID drivers onto it whilst it's on that.
Once installed you can now move the drive back to the Intel ICH9R.

The problem is that Intel does not support changing the setting from RAID to or from AHCI after you've installed the OS. If you attempt to do this, you'll get a BSOD in Windows. This is documented on the Intel web site (and I just happen to have stumbled across it two days ago). You have to set this up prior to installing the OS.

However, if you set the controller to RAID, then all SATA ports are RAID or AHCI depending on what you do with the RAID setup. You can have RAID drives plus non-RAID drives at the same time - no need to use the other SATA controller (if you are using any IDE devices, you don't want to use SATA on the JMicron controller - it messes up - well on the Gigabyte MBs it does).

So, on the Intel matrix controllers:

AHCI = AHCI
RAID = RAID + AHCI

You'll always be safe choosing RAID even if you never intend to use RAID. If you change your mind in the future, you will not have to re-install the OS.

To boot to the optical drive on my IP35 Pro when in RAID/AHCI mode, I had to select a special boot option to boot to the optical drive, not just CDROM, keep hitting page down, you'll know it when you see it. (I would have to reboot to check exactly what it says, which I cannot do right now.)

To enable RAID/AHCI mode without reinstalling Windows XP I was able to follow these instructions. Obviously, follow them at your own risk, but they worked fine on my IP35 Pro for Windows XP 32-bit. If it's a fresh install with nothing to lose, why not give it a shot though?

I have not used the IP35's RAID support (I'm using Linux software RAID instead), so I can't answer your questions about mixing Intel RAID with non-RAID drives, unfortunately. I have also not tried the J-Micron SATA ports at all.

Thanks for the advice guys. I ended up having to rebuild the OS to get it into RAID mode, but it went pretty quickly, and I keep all my data on a separate drive so I didn't lose anything. Thanks especially for the tip about boot to CD in RAID mode. I had to use an IDE drive to build the OS, but that fix means I don't have to crack the case every time I need to boot from CD.

Also, just to clarify, with 2 drives you can only do Raid 0 OR Raid 1, not both. Raid 0+1 is a combination of the two raid types and requires at least 4 identical drives. With two drives you can do Raid 1 for redundancy, but you will not get a speed boost using Raid 1.

So, to sum up:

Is it possible to enable RAID on this board, and still use SATA DVD writers?

Without using the JMicron controller?

Yes to both questions.

Yes. Putting the ICH9R into RAID mode does not force all attached drives to be members of an array - creating an array and selecting member drives is a separate step. So, you should be able to leave the 160GB HDD as a single/JBOD drive then create a new RAID 0 or 1 array with the two 640GB HDDs as members.

As for the OS that was on the 160GB, there are articles out there that address changing the SATA controller to AHCI/RAID mode post-installation.