Need another RAID sticky!!

[mikeyb_in_sd]

I have a computer. It is an asus a7n8x deluxe and it has on board RAID.. I love RAID MIRROR!! Yes I do

My question is: what is the theory of my on board raid controller.. Is this a SATA controller or a serial controller
or a true RAID controller, OR WHAT IS IT..Now, if I build a computer, that doesn't have an on board SATA RAID, when I buy a pci card, is it called a RAID controller, or is it a SATA controller. If you have a SATA controller, can you you use software to force it to be a RAID controller?

For example, this is my local computer store:
http://startechsandiego.com/StarTech%20Computers%20%20Products%20Controller%20Card.htm#SATA%20Controllers

What is an ATA controller that has RAID capabilities

The reason why I ask, is for a moment today, I thought I had a motherboard failure. (black screen, no bios dump, no beep codes) and I wondered if I could move my two RAID mirror drives to a new mobo, but of course I would have to get them a controller card

anyway, thanks for reading this..

 

[paulcooperorama]

some mobo's do have a true on board raid card but sadly other do not. you should talk to Asus on this one and find out if it is a true raid controller card not just a software raid (which do not work all of the time) as far as moving your raid from one to another... as long as the cards are like and they see the drives you should be fine otherwise do not initalize them or you will loose your data

 

[UncleDave]

AFAIK - RAID 1 is the only RAID level that you can move with 100% confidence. This is because the RAID controller is writing the same information on each drive, there is no recovery information or stripping - just a copy of the data. If you need/want to you can take a drive, connect it to a IDE or SATA port and use it like a normal drive.

The way I understand the differences is that IDE (or ATA or PATA) & SATA are HOW the PC communicates with the drive. The RAID CONTROLLER decides WHAT information to write to each drive.

There is also software RAID where software decides which hard disk to write information. This has a greater overhead than a RAID controller which is normally a chip(s).

If my motherboard died I'd just replace it with a motherboard that has an onboard RAID CONTROLLER.

I hope that answers...