onboard and PCI SATA controllers

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SpeedCheese

I have an ASUS P4S8X board which can take two onboard SATA drives. I have
one SATA drive hooked up to this, but you are forced to configure this as a
single RAID 0 array (with a single disk). I would like to connect this
natively to take advantage of S.M.A.R.T. etc which, because XP sees this as
an array, I can't right now.

If I was to install a SATA PCI controller card and move this disk to it
would
a) I need to reinstall everything, bearing in mind this disk is the boot
disk; and
b) would I see a performance decrease / increase ?

TIA
 
Yes, you will have to re-install everything! The SATA drive has be set up
with a RAID 0 configuration. Since you will be changing this, the drivers
will be different and will not be able to read the RAID configurations.

As for the speed, it may be faster because there is no RAID configuration to
decode.
 
Are you sure about this? I moved an ATA drive over from my RAID port to a
regular IDE channel, and it booted up Server 2003 just like magic. It was
configured as a single driver RAID 0 array. I was kind of surprised it let
me configure the drive like that, and I was even more surprised when it let
me move it over without reformatting it. I ended up reformatting it
anyways, just because I didn't trust it.

And this had nothing to do with a SATA array, so you're on your own on that.

Clint
 
I have the same motherboard, with dual SATA disks (Seagate 120 Gig, each).
They are treated as independent RAID arrays of one disk each. I really did
not want to do any sort of RAID. Rather, I only wanted the speed
improvement of SATA over ATA/100, and I got that.

While I have heard of some motheboards that have native support for SATA, I
do not believe that our P4S8X is among them. So, if you want to keep the
SATA disk on that motherboard, you must keep it as a RAID array of one.

Alternatively, you could get another, newer, motherboard and try the disk on
it. However, unlike plain vanilla ATA hard drives on a plain vanilla IDE
controller, switching a RAIDed disk (even a disk of one) to a new controller
may not work. But, at worst I imagine that the disk would be unreadbale.
No data should be lost, unless you do a disk initialization (aka fdisk or
similar).

You might be able to make an image of the partition on this disk (e.g.,
GHOST, TrueImage, DriveImage) onto a temporaty hard drive, connect the old
drive to a new controller, initialize/format, then restore the image. Note
that I said make an image of the partitions, not the whole disk. Let the
disk initialization software handle the partitioning and master boot record.
Just copy all the data, including XP. Of course, be sure that the partition
with XP on it is declared "active", meaning bootable.

The odds of having toi re-active XP are essentially 100% if you get a new
motherboard. That is not necessarility something to fear. Additionally,
you might have to do a "repair" of XP, for whihc you will need a real XP
CDROM. You will then need to reapply al ervice packs.
 
Bob said:
I have the same motherboard, with dual SATA disks (Seagate 120 Gig, each).
They are treated as independent RAID arrays of one disk each.
Click to expand...

No such thing. They are two separate disks, with their own partitions.
I really
did not want to do any sort of RAID. Rather, I only wanted the speed
improvement of SATA over ATA/100, and I got that.
Click to expand...

There is no speed improving per se, as generally the drives are what limit
the performance, not the interface.

You probably just got a better drive, that happened to be SATA.
While I have heard of some motherboards that have native support for SATA,
I do not believe that our P4S8X is among them. So, if you want to keep
the SATA disk on that motherboard, you must keep it as a RAID array of
one.
Click to expand...

As pointed out earlier, a RAID partition is one that spans multiple disks,
normal partitions segment (logically!) the drives.
Alternatively, you could get another, newer, motherboard and try the disk
on it. However, unlike plain vanilla ATA hard drives on a plain vanilla
IDE controller, switching a RAIDed disk (even a disk of one) to a new
controller may not work.
Click to expand...

There is no reason why a single disk configurations should not move to other
controllers without problems.
But, at worst I imagine that the disk would be
unreadbale. No data should be lost, unless you do a disk initialization
(aka fdisk or similar).

You might be able to make an image of the partition on this disk (e.g.,
GHOST, TrueImage, DriveImage) onto a temporaty hard drive, connect the old
drive to a new controller, initialize/format, then restore the image.
Note that I said make an image of the partitions, not the whole disk.
Let the disk initialization software handle the partitioning and master
boot record. Just copy all the data, including XP. Of course, be sure
that the partition with XP on it is declared "active", meaning bootable.

The odds of having toi re-active XP are essentially 100% if you get a new
motherboard. That is not necessarility something to fear. Additionally,
you might have to do a "repair" of XP, for whihc you will need a real XP
CDROM. You will then need to reapply al ervice packs.
Click to expand...

Good advice, but hopefully unnecessary.

A RAID controller can do RAID, but it doesn't have to, with a single disk
you do not need (nor can do) any form of RAID. It is a normal controller in
any other sense, but with a higher layer that allows it to overlay the disks
and span a partition across them as if they were one drive. It then uses
it's knowledge of the configuration to increase reliability and/or speed.
If the higher layer is not needed, it can be bypassed and act as a non-RAID
controller.

If your controller has the option for "single disk RAID" it is plain wrong.
It should not treat the drive as any form of RAID, thus partitions are
"normal".

Ben
 
Thanks for the feedback.

I think the issue here is that the onboard controller does not allow for a
single disk configuration. You are effectively forced into setting up a
"RAID" array even though I accept that it is nothing of the kind as it only
contains one disk. In XP Device Manager it shows as "Promise 1+0 Stripe /
RAID0 SCSI Disk Device" which is clearly isn't but this is really the crux
of the problem. If it sees this as a RAID array of whatever kind, I lose all
the disk monitoring capability which comes with the drive because,
essentially, it doesn't know what drive it is.

I'll try getting a cheapo external controller card and see what happens.
Don't mind doing a reinstall - done it plenty of times before. Also assuming
that the 133Mb/s limit of PCI will not be reached even with a SATA disk.
 
SpeedCheese said:
Thanks for the feedback.

I think the issue here is that the onboard controller does not allow for a
single disk configuration. You are effectively forced into setting up a
"RAID" array even though I accept that it is nothing of the kind as it
only contains one disk. In XP Device Manager it shows as "Promise 1+0
Stripe / RAID0 SCSI Disk Device" which is clearly isn't but this is
really the crux of the problem. If it sees this as a RAID array of
whatever kind, I lose all the disk monitoring capability which comes with
the drive because, essentially, it doesn't know what drive it is.
Click to expand...

Thats kind of really stupid. Shame on Promise.
I'll try getting a cheapo external controller card and see what happens.
Don't mind doing a reinstall - done it plenty of times before. Also
assuming that the 133Mb/s limit of PCI will not be reached even with a
SATA disk.
Click to expand...

Two Raptors in RAID would get you close... otherwise, no.

Ben
 
Your single HD that is connected to your Promise controller configured
as Raid-0 should work JUST FINE connected to a different controller as a
single drive. I tested this about a month ago.
 
mr potatohead said:
Your single HD that is connected to your Promise controller configured
as Raid-0 should work JUST FINE connected to a different controller as a
single drive. I tested this about a month ago.
Click to expand...

I have a single IDE drive (80 GB WD Caviar SE) connected to my Promise
(onboard) controller (configured as IDE, not RAID), and have *three* optical
drives (DVD-ROM and DVD-RW as primary master and primary slave,
respectively, and CD-RW as secondary master). Here's how I did it (clean
install):

1. I started with the HD as primary master and the DVD drives on the
secondary port (the XP Pro/SP1 slipstreamed CD was in the DVD-ROM,
configured as the boot drive initially). After the first stage of the
install reboot, I went into the BIOS and set the WD as the boot drive.

2. During the second stage (Setup completion) Windows detected everything
*except* my onboard Intel Gigabit Ethernet and the onboard Promise
controller (it auto-disables when no devices are connected to it).

3. Once the second restart finishes, I install the *catch-up* drivers for
detected hardware, and the Intel chipset and GE drivers, which, naturally,
required another reboot.

4. After *this* reboot, I install (from the motherboard support CD) the
Windows XP drivers for the Promise controller, then shut down *manually*
(not restarting). While the system is *completely powered off*, I move the
HD to the Promise controller, move the DVD drives to the primary controller,
and install/connect the CD-RW (secondary controller). I power back up
(after closing the case) and go back into the BIOS, checking to make sure
the WD is now detected by the Promise controller, and setting it to be the
primary boot device. Once this is confirmed, I boot into Windows.

5. Promise controllers appear as *SCSI* devices in Windows, and up to and
including SP1 are subject to the infamous *SCSI slowdown* bug. I have no
idea if either Promise or Microsoft has adressed this problem.

Christopher L. Estep
 
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