Core 2 + Raid Advice

Hello forum dwellers!

I am looking for some help, and have a few specific questions. I am ready to upgrade to a new rig and core 2 seems to hit the sweet spot for performance/price. There are so many chipsets! I was planning on going with 680i since the feature set was astounding, but now that there are potential hardware issues I want to avoid that path.

Here are my primary questions:
1. Which RAID mode should I use? I have 2 raptor 36 gig drives that I would like to use for performance, and 2 160 gig WD RE drives that I would like to use for redundance. Can I mix match hard drives in RAID 5 with the current controllers without suffering major performance loss or stability issues?? Can I stripe one set, and clone the other (RAID 0, RAID 1)

2. Which chipset/controller do you recommend? And specifically, which motherboard rocks the house that utilizes that chipset/controller.

I am not interested in overclocking, but I will use the computer for occasional gaming... so keep that in mind.

Thank you very much for reading and hopefully responding to my dilemma.

simpsond said:

Which RAID mode should I use? I have 2 raptor 36 gig drives that I would like to use for performance, and 2 160 gig WD RE drives that I would like to use for redundance. Can I mix match hard drives in RAID 5 with the current controllers without suffering major performance loss or stability issues?? Can I stripe one set, and clone the other (RAID 0, RAID 1)

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I would recommend to set the 2 36 drives in RAID 0 and the 2 160s in RAID1. You should be able to do this on any modern SATA RAID controller that supports at least 4 ports. I used to have 2 36s in RAID 0 and they screamed.

simpsond said:

1. Which RAID mode should I use?

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Does that mean that not using RAID is not an option?

It seems that your wording has already made clear what RAID modes you'd like to use, since the only available mode for redundancy with two drives is RAID-1. Just note that redundancy != backup, since deleting a file on one HDD will remove it from both.

I currently have my raptors in RAID1 for redundancy. However, It is unclear to me if onboard raid controllers can have multiple arrays of differing types. Which on board chipsets support (RAID 5) or (RAID1 and RAID0) flawlessly. I don't want to purchase a rocket raid, highpoint, etc controller. I have just heard about issues with RAID on the latest generation boards. Thanks for the replies.

clayton006 said:

You should be able to do this on any modern SATA RAID controller that supports at least 4 ports.

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I am aware that I should be able to do this, but can I for sure?

Looks like in my attempt to find the correct question, I found the answer. I will shoot for an Intel ICH8R based board... Any recommendations? DQ6 ?

I really like my ICH8R setup. I have lots of posts about it.

Matrix Raid definitely impressed me over nVidia's raid,

simpsond said:

Looks like in my attempt to find the correct question, I found the answer. I will shoot for an Intel ICH8R based board... Any recommendations? DQ6 ?

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I would suggest you look around a bit. I have heard mixed stories about the DQ6. Given its price I'd rather go with a DS3, DS3P or DS4.

simpsond said:

I am aware that I should be able to do this, but can I for sure?

Click to expand...

Sorry I took a while to respond.
I know I was able to do this on my NForce4 Ultra board. I know that not all RAID is the same. But I figure if Nvidia RAID was able to, so should others.. (not always true though)

I am looking at a similar setup, I'm upgrading my rig from an older AMD chipset/chip to a new 6600 pentium setup which means a new motherboard, I need to support RAID 0 for my dual Raptors and need only 1xPCI-E for my 7950GX2

I'm looking at this board:- ASUS P5B

But It only has one IDE port which means one cable has to stretch between my 3rd HDD and my DVD writer which isn't going to work :/

Does anyone know if this board support the 7950GX2? I know a lot of boards have problems.

The ony other question I really have is that is there any good system drivers for windows Vista RTM, I'm looking to get my RAID 0 up and running under vista and it has problems detecting most of the Nforce4 RIAD setups even with the beta drivers.

[EDIT]
Sorry foudn the answer myself, the asus driver page lists beta drivers with RAID support

Beta Version V1.17.3.2 2006/10/24 update
OS Vista 32bit / Vista 64bit
Description JMicron JMB36X RAID Controller Driver V1.17.3.2 for Windows Vista(WHQL) & 64bit Vista(WHQL).
[/EDIT]

Can anyone recomend a better board, I don't want to go over the top with price though, I'd prefer Asus if possible since they've proved themselves to be reliable.

[edit2]
Ok scratch that Mobo, only 2 SATA ports support RAID and 1 is external, what a joke
[/edit2]

[edit3]
Ok I think a few people have got the RAID thing wrong with this board, I think it has 2 SATA controllers, one is 4x SATA and one is 2xSATA which include one internal and one external, I'm assuming you can use RAID 0 on the 4x SATA so all drives are internal?
[/edit3]

[edit4]
OK last edit I promis

I learnt that the intel chipset this board uses doesnt support raid, which is why theres a 2nd SATA controller for raid, but there's also a P5B-E revision which uses a version of the chipset which supports hardware RAID 0,1,10,5 across 6 SATA ports, so I'm going to go with that
[/edit4]