Intel 82801 SATA Controller - Software or hardware?

warewulf

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Sep 17, 2006
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To make a long story short: I'm trying to determine if this raid card (Intel 82801 SATA Controller) would be considered a software or hardware RAID?

Boss purchased 4 Dell Precision T1700's. He decided that it was likely a software RAID card, so purchased the Adaptec ASR-6805E. The bios won't recognize this as a bootable option. Dell won't support an Adaptec card. So thinking of using the onboard. Boss doesn't want to use it if it's a 'software' RAID.

Any insight would be appreciated.
 

Poprin

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Dec 13, 2012
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I'm pretty sure that all motherboard RAID 'controllers' are not dedicated RAID controllers. They are a bit of a hybrid and use SATA bus and chipset coupled with software that works independent of the OS. A hardware RAID would require it's own physical chipset on the motherboard.