SATA RAID 0 on GA-MA69G-S3H...possible to add another SATA drive?

[idoc]

I have 2 SATA drives attached to SATA 0 and SATA 1 connectors, and configured as RAID 0, running XP. I'm thinking of replacing my current IDE back-up drive with another SATA drive if this is possible. Can I still add another SATA drive to my system and attach it to either SATA 2 or SATA 3 connector? Sent e-mail to Gigabyte but they have yet to respond. Does anybody have any experience regarding this or similar motherboard? TIA

 

[Bohoba]

yep if ya got sata3 and 4 sure go for it

 

[idoc]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm worried that the bios/system would have a problem with a mix of 2 SATA drives already on RAID 0, and another SATA drive, all on one SATA controller. Then I would have a new SATA drive that I can't use Have you or anybody else had actual experience with this same situation? Thanks again

 

[Bohoba]

you got port pairs ie port 0 sata 1 and 2 port 1 sata 3 and 4 check the manual

sata is not like IDE hence no need to master/slave them


hope that helps a bit

 

[idoc]

The manual doesn't say anything about this kind of scenario. I'm sure that for boards with 2 SATA controllers (one is on the southbridge, and the other is a 3rd party like JMicron or Silicon) that usually have at least 6 SATA ports that are color-coded for differentiation, a RAID array can be installed on one controller, and non-RAID drives, HDD or optical, can be installed on the other controller's ports. Without any conflict in the setup or configuration. I have read posts of such actually in use. But my motherboard has the the AMD SB600 southbridge (with 4 SATA ports) only. And there lies my uncertainty if I may simply add a new SATA drive to either of the remaining ports (SATA 2 or SATA 3).

 

[idoc]

Just an update: I successfully installed my new SATA HDD. I initially connected the drive to one of the free SATA ports (SATA 3) and booted into Windows to check if the new drive was recognized: it wasn't. So I rebooted and went into the RAID set-up, and configured the new single disk as JBOD as suggested in another forum. After that, it was just a matter of partitioning and formatting it. Hope this helps others with the same concern