"Doc" said:
Pardon if this sounds like an elementary question, but looking at boards
like this
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=79
It mentions Serial ATA RAID. I'm a bit fuzzy on exactly what RAID is, will a
board like this accomodate IDE drives - for example a typical 7200 rpm 160
gig drive?
Thanks
RAID binds together a number of disk drives into an array. The
array looks like one drive to the OS. The array can feature
enhanced transfer rate (drives chugging in parallel), can feature
enhanced reliability (more than one drive holds the same info),
or a combination of both. In general, RAID is more trouble than
it is worth. You still need to do backups, as RAID can still
fail on you in a spectacular fashion - RAID is not a substitute
for doing backups regularly.
" - Intel 865PE / ICH5-R RAID
- 2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100 Connectors
- 2 x Serial ATA 150 RAID Connectors "
There are two connectors for ribbon cables, supporting four disk drives.
The maximum transfer rate on those is UDMA5 (100MB/sec).
There are two SATA connectors for new SATA drives. Either a 1.5Gbit/sec
or a 3Gbit/sec drive could be connected, but the drive would have
to operate at 1.5Gbit/sec (most come jumpered correctly that way
from the factory, to prevent problems like this).
The chipset can handle large drives (>137GB/sec), as long as you
are using the correct service pack for Windows. Generally, Win2K
or WinXP or later would be recommended for that.
The chipset supports RAID or non-RAID configurations. You can use
six separate drives if you want, in total.
If you have an older OS, like Win98SE, you can use the "Compatible"
disk setting. You are allowed to use four drives total in that mode,
out of the six possible drive connections. That would be the
two ribbon cables, or one ribbon cable and two SATA drives.
In terms of drivers, if you aren't using RAID, you should not
need to install a driver via F6 when installing or repairing
the existing boot disk. Win2K SP4 or WinXP SP1 or later should
be sufficient, for a large drive, without adding a driver.
Using a slipstreamed installer CD (made via "autostreamer")
makes this easier.
If you plan on making a RAID array from the boot disk in the
future, read the "RAID Ready" section here. You can install
a single disk drive, use the RAID driver, and the single drive
runs in a non-RAID mode today. Then, via migration, it is possible
to add a second disk later. This doc is a very early one, and
other possible modes may be supported by the RAID driver now.
But if you don't use the RAID driver now, you cannot install the
RAID driver later, as the chipset won't be in RAID mode at the
time, and there will be no way to get the driver to install.
So while this doc is not the whole answer, it suggests you do
more research before your OS install, if you plan on using
RAID in the future.
ftp://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/IAAR_Quick_Start.pdf
See leftmost column "ICH5R" here - driver is called Matrix
Storage Manager:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-020674.htm
Paul