Question About SATA and Micro ATX motherboards

jucestain

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 2, 2007
Messages
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I've done research, but I'm still completely lost about sata raid. Basically, I just want to get two 500gb hdds and combine them using raid (to allow 1gb of storage). Also, I was wondering if anyone could reccomend a microATX board that could achieve this. I'm completely ignorant of how sata raid works, so any help would be great.

-Justin
 
I've done research, but I'm still completely lost about sata raid. Basically, I just want to get two 500gb hdds and combine them using raid (to allow 1gb of storage). Also, I was wondering if anyone could reccomend a microATX board that could achieve this. I'm completely ignorant of how sata raid works, so any help would be great.

-Justin

Might need to know a bit more about your current system. Are you upgrading, or building from scratch?
 
Building from scratch. I've built 3 pc's all within the year so I know most of the basic stuff, it's just that this build has to have a lot of storage. So I figured I'd try to do a sata raid with two 500gb harddrives (and I've never done anything with raid before). I also want to make this a microATX build as well, since the three pc's I built before were all regular ATX midtower pc's, and I figured I would attempt to delve into the unknown. But yes, to answer your question, this is from scratch.

The build is going to be as follows:
Q6600
MicroATX mobo
This case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112142
2GB of CAS4 ram that's DDR533 (since this isn't getting overclocked)
8800GT (it's out of stock, so this thing is going to run on onboard graphics until it comes back in stock)
520HX PSU (or maybe a cheaper one depending on budget)
2 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB
dvd drive

I think that's everything. Oh yea, this comp is going to be used for home use and video editing.

-Justin
 
If you're going to use the drive for just storage I'd suggest not AIDing. If you need more storage but want to keep it all under a single drive letter get a 750GB or 1TB drive. AID0 is just not worth the hassle and double risk only to have more storage.


But if you still want to go for it, then most recent G35 or G965 boards have onboard RAID capability. Just check the southbridge and make sure it has an R at the end of the name (e.g. ICH9R instead of ICH9). Nvidia boards also have built-in RAID options, but I don't know much about the variations on their chipsets to help out.
 
thanks man, I'm goin to bed so i'll check the board for more updates later. Oh, WD has a 750GB hdd for 150 which is really attractive. peace.
 
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