Raid Question for New Build

[zethex]

Hey,

Just simple question, building a comp for a friend.

Specs
=======================

Asus P6T Deluxe
Core i7 920
G.Skills 1600mhz DDR3 ram
850watt Zalman Power Supply
ATI Radeon 4870X2

2x 640 gig WD 16 meg cache hard drives

2x 1 TB Samsung 32 meg cache hard drives

1x 320 gig WD HD

1x 180 gig WD HD

------------------------------------------------

Anyway question being, quite simple but just making sure.

I can have 2 seperate RAIDS going on at the same time right? Raid 0 640 gigs, and Raid 0 1 TB?

The motherboard can handle that without a RAID CARD?

And another question. He asked if I should have the operating systems/program files on the 1 TB RAID for the 32 meg cache. Is there much of a difference between 16 meg and 32 meg cache to make a difference?

Thank you

 

[MRFS]

> The motherboard can handle that without a RAID CARD?

Yes: it has 6 x standard SATA/3G ports and 2 x SAS ports:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131346


How to you want to cable your 6 x SATA drives?

I believe the orange ports are SAS-compatible and
controlled by a Marvell 88SE6320.

Check your manual to confirm whether or not those
SAS ports are backwards-compatible with standard SATA HDDs.

Just remember that you must prepare a driver disk
in order to choose the F6 option when running
Windows Setup. XP requires a floppy disk;
Vista permits drivers to be loaded via USB.


> Is there much of a difference between 16 meg and 32 meg cache to make a difference?

The difference should not be too noticeable,
unless you do I/O with lots of small files
that fit into the combined caches of all HDDs
configured in the same RAID array.


Here's what I would do:

OS on 2 x WD 640GB in RAID 0 on the main SATA ports
(be aware that WD recommends their "RE" models with TLER --
Time Limited Error Recovery, which works better with RAID setups)

2 x Samsung in RAID 0 on the SAS controllers (if compatible) for data

JBOD the other 2 WD HDDs

You'll need to prepare a driver disk and load the driver with F6
during Windows Setup.

Be sure your BIOS is set to RAID on the 6 x main SATA PORTS.

The Intel ICH10R can be accessed using the Intel Matrix Storage
Technology after Windows is installed, but you must do all the
initialization correctly.


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

See page 2-30 in Version E4262, Third Edition (V3) of the motherboard User Manual, for SAS directions:

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=179&l3=815&l4=0&model=2593&modelmenu=1


MRFS

 

[zethex]

Sweet thanks.

SAS is backward compatible and sadly enough the 640 gigs aren't the RE versions .

Thanks for the help man!