acutshall

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I have a ASUS P4800Edeluxe which has your Primaryand Secondary IDE connectors, A promise Raid 80pin connectors, 2 SATA connectors(Sata1 and Sata2) and 2 Sata connectors labeled Sata_Raid1 and Sata_Raid2 ; You have a Fast Track Raid utility for configuration and Intel Raid which is configured in the BIOS for the SATA 1 and 2 connectors. I have 3 SATA drives, my plans were to us one for the system and 2 for a Raid 0 so I connected one to RAID 1 and the other 2 to connectors SATA_RAID1 and SATA_RAID2. My confusion is which utility to use to configure my raid, I tried using the Intel setup in the BIOS however my Drive connected to SATA 1 disappears, so I turned that back off and my drive reappeared so then I uesed promise to configure my raid, it showed two drives available however being my drives are all the same size it is hard to tell which drives it used, Long story short I I went ahead and installed XP on the drive showing up in the Bios and left the two raid 0 in the promise utility as is, rebooted the pc after OS install, no boot up. any suggestions?
THX
 

pat

Expert
A good start will be to read the RAID FAQ in the HDD section. It will give you some clue about what is RAID and how it works.

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acutshall

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The Promise also controls raid on all connectors to allow you to mix IDE and SATA drives, Being all SATA I connected mine up to SATA RAID1 and RAID2 which I was able to create a raid from the 2 storage drives on bootup, howver it seems that intel has also include a raid for the chipset used which caused me a bit of confusion as which to use and which one has prority or if I am supposed to use both.
THX
 

pat

Expert
But the promise, being a third party controller, need drivers for either RAID or SATA operation. A third party controller is just like a PCI card but integrated to the motherboard.



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pat

Expert
Usually, I suggest to use thhe chipset solution first, and when more drives are needed, the use the remaining connector on the Promise controller. This way, it speed up boot time as the BIOS don't have to wait for the Promise BIOS to scan for drive and load itself..

Chipset solution, as in the nforce3-4 chipset for example, are somethime faster. The Promise controller, being another PCI device might be slowed down if you have multiple PCI devices(tv tuner, sound card, lan card,...) that are accessed at the same time. And the PCI bandwidth limits the speed of the data trasfer.

Which one to use? Test them both.. there is nothing dangerous to do some test with HDD.. and make your mind based on what you like better


The promise controller does not allow you to use SATA and IDE srive.. SATA is the interface and IDE is the controller, or the drive. So, you should have say that the promise allows the use of the SATA interface as well as the old ATA interface. Both interface are connected to IDE devices.

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acutshall

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Thanks for that input about SATA and IDE, I agree that the BIOS raid would be better espceially with the bad reviews that the board got for using the promise controller. I do have a problem though, when in the BIOS only 4 IDE connections show up, one with my CD ROM connected which is on my Priamry IDE and the OS drive which is on the regular SATA IDE, the two drives connected to the board SATA RAID 1 and two do not show up, the directions state if you want to use intels raid to enable the the "configure sata as raid" which makes the OS drive disappear. I guess I can not have my cake and eat it to, if I want Intel to rule I am going to have to put the drives on the regular SATA connectors for my Raid 0, which would be fine if I use regular IDE Drives for the OS. Or I am going to have Promise rule the RAid 0 on the connectores SATA_Raid 1 and two, this will leave the regular SATA connectors for the OS. Again Thanks for helping me to work through this.
 

pat

Expert
I dont know about Intel chipset. But on my nforce4, I have a RAID array on SATA1 and SATA2 and SATA3 and 4 each has their own HDD, while my DVD burner and CD burner are each plugged on their own ATA connector. so all of my connector are used with one device each. That mean 2x160 gigs for the RAID0 array and one 200 gigs and one 40 gigs.

If I had an onboard Promise controller, I could add other devices.

So, I dont see why you cannot have 1 SATA on one connector and use the 2 last as a RAID array. So, maybe the best for you is to use the Promise to add the RAID array. You enable it in BIOS, set it as RAID, define your array at post time, let it boot, and install the drivers while in Windows as it will surely discover a new device.

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czarousa

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Just a query
What mobo are you using is it A8N-E by asus or nforce4 ultra chipset to be precise?
And also tell me you said you are using 2 interfaces for raid 0 and other two connectors as normal non raid disks is it right?

I have asked this question in my different post and hope to get an answer from yu here
Thanks ( is the nforce4 ultra chipset as good as the sli one??)

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Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
OK, you're using a single drive for Windows, right? You'd connect that to the Intel controller and disable RAID mode for the Intel controller, then set BIOS to boot the Intel controller first.

The other drives, you'd raid them on the Promise controller in Promise RAID BIOS, and you could set them up from inside windows.

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acutshall

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ASUS P4C800 E Deluxe with Intel 875P chipset, basically the promise controls both the special controller connector on the side of the board ant the two SATA connectors marked Raid 1 & 2, the Intel chipset controls the two other SATA connectors. What I did is setup one drive(OS) on the SATA connector marked Raid 1, went into the promise contoller utility and walked throught the auto setup which alloed promise to recognize the drive as non-raid. Set up my os, connected the two sata drives and installed drivers, and then went into both the Intel utility to setup raid and the bios as well.
THX