Selecting a RAID setup

I dont really understand why you mention the eSata connection.

I really dont recommand Raid with a external connection, even if it's possible, especially raid0 if the drive gets disconnected you loose access to the data...

Manual
Page 32, use SATA_RAID1 and 2

It is my understanding that these are on the ICH7R, so you should do the a floppy with the driver(if you want to install on windows) as shown on page 126

Follow the instruction starting on page 141 to create the raid array.

When installing windows, Press F6 at the beginning(written downn there) and put the floppy in!

Good luck

thank you for your thoughtful reply.

On page 2-30 & 2-31 of the P5WD2-E P manual, it shows two alternative hookups for eSATA drives.
As you said, the first is for ICH7R Serial ATA hookup;

the next is for Marvell Serial ATA

I understand that there is a create bookdisk routine on the mobo CD, and it is used during setup.
That is on 5-18t hru 5-32 in the manual

I'm just not clear on which set of connectors to plug my drives, and which drivers to employ. My OS is WXP Pro w/SP2
You know which would be better or appropriate for my system.

I got the eSATAs because I was told they were fast. I'm going to use dual channel 512 DDR2-800 for the same reason.

I want to protect my data but can do that on external NAS. That doesn't need to be that fast.

If I'm too dense to understand your answers, then you don't need to reply to this post.
It was just that a friend of mine screwed up while he was setting up his RAID set in a server last week and got locked out of the drives, and he just sent them back under warranty.

I'd rather avoid all that and ask for help first

thanks again!

BTW, I messed up in my first post. The ports Labeled SATA1-4 are on the ICH7R and the one Labeled RAID_SATA1-4 are on the marvell. So depending on where you plug them, (again refer to page 2-4), you should choose the driver accordingly.

Just to be clear, you know that eSata is External SATA, so does read connector at the back of the motherboard next to the network interface. I am not 100% but I beleive this goes to the marvell chip.

So do you really want to use the external connector for the Raid?
As I mentioned earlier, it's an extremely poor idea, especially with Raid 0.

Now if you I understand you correctly, then I think but not 100% positive that you should plug the first internal HD on the RAID_SATA1 and the other on the external. You should see if the HD is actually detected by the raid controller.

I do not know where I got that 'e' from.
Maybe it was still stuck in my subconscious from researching eSCSI the other day.

What I was meaning all along was two internal SATA drives.

duh  

Ok thanks for clearing that up.

I would plug it into the highest set of the motherboard. And use the ICH7 drivers for 32 bit drivers.

then follow 5-18 + and you are good to go

Raid 0 is not for data protection. You either want to run raid 1, 5 .. that provides protection. Raid 0 is a accident looking for a place to happen. Since you are using external raid 0 is a very poor choice.

I thnk he meant he would backup on his nas, no biggie if the backup was slow...

Not sure though, good idea to point that out

OK here's what I think y'all are saying.
plug the drives into the connectors marked SATA1 & SATA2 (they are the top ones)
(NOT the ones marked SATA_RAID1-4)
use the 32 bit boot F6flpy32 during the install;
(NOT the F6 flpy64)
I will use the RAID 0 config (no fault tolerance; mirrored; default stripe width)
which will provide me fastest read/write.
I will also enable AHCI

So I cannot use the 64 bit setup unless I configure the whole system to 64 which might cause conflicts with my OS and other apps, since most are 32?
thanks

Some MB only allow raid on specific ports. So you may need to use SATA-RAID connectors if the other does not work. If you are wanting raid 0 is faster than raid 1 but not necessarly faster than a raid 5. Or set up a large single drive to backup your raid 0. Some motherboards support 0+1, which means the raid 0 is mirrored. So you have data protection.

Using Intel Matrix-RAID he can have OS and important data on RAID-1, and high performance stuff, like games using RAID-0.

It permits multiple different type of RAID-#/# over the same array of drives. (Like parition 1 is RAID-1, then partition 2 is RAID-0).

www.intel.com

No fault tolerance, mirrored is like saying it has a blackish, whitish color. Running a mirrored RAID is RAID1. 2 drives, one an exact copy of the other. No fault tolerance means the RAID, 0 in this case, will give you NO backup. You'll have to provide that via another methode.

Unless you are loading XPPro x64 stick with the 32-bit drivers. The 64-bit drivers are for the OS. A 32-bit OS will not "see" 64-bit drivers.

yeah 32 bit is it.

that idea about partitioning and running a RAID 0 and RAID1 array matrix over the two drives sounded slick.
but at first a bit ambitious.
maybe 50G RAID 1 for the apps and 150G RAID 0 for the data.
Think I'll try it.

I'm using an external USB/ EIDE for all my data now, but it'll be used for backup only once I fire up the new #1.

Hi everyone,

I'm also having some difficulties getting my Raid setup up and going.

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong.

I have a Asus P5WD2-E Premium motherboard with 2 gigs of OCZ pc6400 Platinum rams, Intel Pentium D 3.4ghz, two Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 hard drives that i just bought 2 days ago, and two optical drives one being a dvd player and one being a dvd burner.

I have connected to two dvd drives to the regular sata connectors one as master and one as slave and they are working fine.

The computer runs perfectly off of my WD 160gb 7200 hard drive with windows xp pro installed.

Now im trying to setup the two 500gig hds to perform in raid0. So I connect the two hard driver to the first two connectors on the motherboard indicating raid1 and raid2 (raid3 and raid4 are not used by me). I have disconnected the other 160gb hard drive to prevent any interference.

Ive gone into the bios and I have set IDE configuration: configure SATA As to Raid, enabled Onboard serial ATA bootrom, and I have enabled Marvell bootrom in order to load the raid bios setup.

During the Raid setup bios I can see both hard disks being available. At the top menu I see RAID 1 and RAID 2 setups, Therefore I choose Raid1 option and I add both drives to that section and I select Raid 0 setting for their raid configuration. Then I initilize or initiate the raid configuration wich tells me by doing so I will lose all the data and I proceed by clicking enter. Finally the initilizing is done and I quit that screen and proceed to windows installtion. During windows installation I press F6 to load the drivers for the raid setup. One being the Intel ICH7 32 bit RAID Driver Disk and the other Marvell 614x WinXP Driver disk. The installation program sucessfully loads both drivers for installation. But when it comes to selecting that particular Raid0 combined drives as one for windows installation I do not see both hard drives as one I see them as two different drives and windows asks me wich drive to install windows on. Im stuck to this point, please help out. Thank you.