SATA/RAID ?

[DCB_AU]

This might be a dumb question but,

I was checking out the Asus website- P4PE mainboard and it lists options- Flexible SATA (Promise Controller) or Raid.
What is the difference? What I want is to install a SATA Hard Drive and the standard DVD Rom plus CDRW Drive in my custom built PC.

Thanks,


<font color=red>DCB</font color=red><font color=white>_</font color=white><font color=blue>AU</font color=blue>

 

[aliu42]

SATA just supports Serial ATA capable hard drives or CDROM/CDRW Drives...Serial ATA is Faster than ATA 100 or 133 because it runs at 150 MB/s instead of 100/133 MB/s

SATA only requires 1 hard drive to achieve 150 MB/s..

Raid on the other hand is another story...

With Raid..you can chain 2 or more Hard Disks together in several configurations...depending on what you want to do..

For example

Raid 0 (striping) takes 2 hard drives and turns them into one..which means you'll get 200 MB/s with 2 ATA 100 Drives..and 266 MB/s with 2 ATA 133 Drives (this is of course assuming the controller supports ATA 133 as well as ATA 100) Remember however both Hard Disks must be identical..I.E. 2xMaxtor 60GB Diamond Max +9 etc..etc..

Also...you won't get 120 GB of storage..but 60GB of storage...

Raid 1 (mirroring) This just takes 2 hard drives makes and one of them is a backup to the other...this is for data integrity...but they only run at 100MB/s or 133MB/s

Raid 0+1 (striping+mirroring) Takes a minimum of 4 hard drives. Hard drives operate in pairs and allows for a failure in either pair that can be replaced (this is setup is for speed and integrity)

There are other configurations...however...I would imagine an onboard RAID would only support these 3 and most only support the first 2...

Hope this helps...

Aliu