How to get IDE raid on ASUS P4P800 SE?

[lujo]

Hello, (sorry for my bad English)

I have three HD, 80GB maxtor, 80GB western digital en 120GB western digital.

I want to use raid 0, with only two disks.

1.
I have heard that if I use 80 GB in combination with 120GB there will be only 160 GB of the storage. Is this correct?

2.
On my motherboard I can select IDE Configuration:
Onboard IDE Operate Mode [Enhanced Mode]
Enhanced Mode Support On [ P-ATA+S-ATA / S-ATA / P-ATA]
Configure S-ATA as RAID [Yes/No]

I get "Configure S-ATA as RAID [Yes/No]" only when I select
Enhanced Mode Support On [P-ATA+S-ATA]
or
Enhanced Mode Support On [S-ATA].

Is there a possibility to make RAID with IDE disks?
Is this possible with my motherboard controller (SouthBridge ICH5)?

Thank you very much.

 

[Muso]

I read the specs on Asus' website, and it doesn't appear that RAID is available for IDE based HDDs with the integrated RAID controller.

 

[lujo]

I read the specs on Asus' website, and it doesn't appear that RAID is available for IDE based HDDs with the integrated RAID controller.

So does this mean that I have to install Windows XP on one drive and make RAID (software) in Windows XP?
But Windows is nog goint to start faster with installation on only one drive....?

Does RAID0 make any difference when zip or unzip files (DVD) about 4,3 GB?
Or with encoding/rebuilding of DVD?

 

[Muso]

I don't know much about software RAID controllers, but I don't believe you can set up RAID once an operating system is installed. It would have to stripe the HDD with data already on that, and the only way to do that would be loading the everything the OS needs to run and the software RAID program into memory, and then writing the data to the two disks. Again, I'm not familiar with software RAID, and don't know if you can setup a software RAID controller with an OS installed. Maybe someone else can help you with that.

RAID will allow your HDDs to export the data from the zip files to your RAM faster, so they can be computed by the CPU. I'm not sure if a CPU can compute data faster than a HDD can load it to RAM. If the CPU can compute data faster than the HDD can give it to RAM, then a RAID array (0 or 5) would give you better performance. If your CPU can't handle data that fast, then RAID won't make a difference. Basically, encoding and zipping are also CPU intensive, and either your HDD or your CPU could be your bottleneck.

 

[lujo]

I don't know much about software RAID controllers, but I don't believe you can set up RAID once an operating system is installed. It would have to stripe the HDD with data already on that, and the only way to do that would be loading the everything the OS needs to run and the software RAID program into memory, and then writing the data to the two disks. Again, I'm not familiar with software RAID, and don't know if you can setup a software RAID controller with an OS installed. Maybe someone else can help you with that.

RAID will allow your HDDs to export the data from the zip files to your RAM faster, so they can be computed by the CPU. I'm not sure if a CPU can compute data faster than a HDD can load it to RAM. If the CPU can compute data faster than the HDD can give it to RAM, then a RAID array (0 or 5) would give you better performance. If your CPU can't handle data that fast, then RAID won't make a difference. Basically, encoding and zipping are also CPU intensive, and either your HDD or your CPU could be your bottleneck.

Ok thank you very much. I have read that software RAID is possible. Now I will search how to make it work. It's is about logical drives ....

My CPU is Pentium 4 3.0 Northwood HT, I think that is fast enough.

 

[Muso]

I was reading up on software RAID arrays at "http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/using_windowsxp_to_make_raid_5_happen/index.html", and it doesn't look like you can install an OS using Windows as a software RAID controller. You can use Windows as a RAID controller to create a seperate array of disks, but obviously can't use it as a system partition because the Windows installation upon which the RAID array is configured is required to run said array.

I haven't been able to find any information on software RAID controllers that initialize before the OS, but I didn't try too hard either. =P