Raid 0 with X79 chipset

[nateO10]

Under intel specification X79 chipset supporting only 2 Sata3 ports. While Asus, MSI and other 3rd party motherboard manufactories would have 4 Sata3 @ 6G.

Would it be possible to have 4 X Sata3 6G in Raid 0 and which companies motherboard model would support this?

Asus Rampage IV comes with 2 Sata3 + 2 eSata. If extension-Sata cable is only capabale of 3G compare to 6G Sata cable then its only able to do 2 Sata @ 6G in Raid 0?
So it seems like MSI X79A-GD65 built with 4 Sata3 6G is capable but it confuses me how the X79 chipset only support up to 2 Sata3 6G ports.

Thanks guys...

 

[candreae]

Under intel specification X79 chipset supporting only 2 Sata3 ports. While Asus, MSI and other 3rd party motherboard manufactories would have 4 Sata3 @ 6G.

Would it be possible to have 4 X Sata3 6G in Raid 0 and which companies motherboard model would support this?

Asus Rampage IV comes with 2 Sata3 + 2 eSata. If extension-Sata cable is only capabale of 3G compare to 6G Sata cable then its only able to do 2 Sata @ 6G in Raid 0?
So it seems like MSI X79A-GD65 built with 4 Sata3 6G is capable but it confuses me how the X79 chipset only support up to 2 Sata3 6G ports.

Thanks guys...

Nate,
It's true that many of the manufacturers are releasing boards with 4x SATA6 ports, but 2 of them will be on an Intel controller and the other 2 on a separate, 3rd party controller. In the case of the Gigabyte models they are using Marvell. At any rate, this setup would make it quite impossible for a hardware based raid 0 setup with 4 drives. As it is I'm having enough difficulty getting 2 bloody drives to work on my gigabyte motherboard...on either controller with the freshest bios.

You could, however purchase a SATA 6G controller card with 4 internal ports...lord knows these boards have enough PciX bandwidth.

Cheers.

-CCASystems

 

[jaquith]

ANS - None with 4xSATA3 Intel's SATA ports. Marvell and others may offer 4xSATA3; others with more e.g. 6x+ SATA3 ports for RAID I've seen with 'Test' boards but nothing in production.

However, unless the drives are SSD's there's no point in worrying about 4xSATA3 RAID. Don't confuse 'Interface' with drive speeds. In fact the Intel's SATA2 ports are more than adequate for ANY mechanical HDD known to exist; mechanical HDD's are at best 120MB/s~150MB/s which is 1/2 the SATA2 speeds of 300MB/s. Also, the Intel SATA2 ports with mechanical HDD's typically offer faster Read and equivalent Write speeds.

Next if you are in need for a RAID with (4) SSD's then regardless look at Dedicated RAID Cards like LSI, Adaptec or Intel with x4 or x8 PCIe lanes and battery backup plus 512MB+ Cache. Further, RAID with parity e.g. 5, 6, etc aren't really good with onboard RAID; I did note RAID 0.

The Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 - http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4047#sp
Intel X79:
2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3 0/1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2 2/3/4/5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
* When a RAID set is built across the SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s channels, the system performance of the RAID set may vary depending on the devices being connected.

2 x Marvell 88SE9172 chips:
4 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3 6/7/8/9) supporting up to 4 SATA 6Gb/s devices
Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1

 

[no cigar]

Greetings guys,

I have one of the Gigabyte boards with the Marvell Controllers (6x sata III)....

I am trying to use the 4 slots on the Marvell to set up 4 SSD drives in Raid0. When the system boots up, it initializes the disks in groups of 2 and I'm unable to pair them to create a raid array of 4 drives. I'm not looking for anymore throughput, I just want an array of my 4 disks that are represented as one drive in windows and thought I could use the Marvell to do this?