P7P55D EVO Raid

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stoopkid

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Jan 9, 2010
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I read here that you cannot use raid and have an extra HDD with that motherboard. I have the EVO, not the pro, but the manual says the same thing, "Due to chipset
limitation..." But the specs for my are different:

6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors
2 x Drive Xpert SATA connectors (navy blue and gray)

What is Drive Xpert, and can i use it for my one left over HDD? I have one 80GB HDD for windows and a 640GB for my junk. I wanted to get another 80GB so boot up would be faster. Can i do this and keep my single HDD?
 
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o1die

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I use the hardrive software to configure all my new drives. You only need one boot drive. I set all the others to secondary. Don't know if you can do this without erasing files. You'll just have to try it; it will warn you if it's about to erase files, so you can cancel. I use maxblast 5, a free download that works with seagate and maxtor drives. Other similar software is also available for different brands. For raid, always use 2 identical drives for the best performance. Don't know if you can use a leftover drive as secondary with raid, but why? I would sell your old drives and get some newer, as cheap as drives are. Or save your money. Get a 64 gb ssd for around $120 and a 1 terabyte drive for around $70. Use maxblast 5 to set up the larger drive as a secondary drive, and the ssd as the boot drive. Then do a drive to drive copy of your old files to the larger drive. Then load windows on the ssd for fast boot up times. It's worth the money. I used a kingston ssd and it worked flawlessly. I'm saving for an even faster one.
 
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FrancoisLuus

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I need to use 3x 1 TB Seagate 7200.12 drives in a RAID 5 configuration, with a 60 GB OCZ Vertex Series SSD as my boot drive and one SATA optical drive.

I am strongly considering the P7P55D EVO board, due to its multiple SATA controllers, but will I be able to boot from a drive on the DriveXpert controller?

Are there any other budget 1156 boards to consider for such a specific drive configuration?

Your advice is much appreciated!
 
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FrancoisLuus

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I understand that there is a common issue with the Intel SATA controllers such that you can only have "All or none RAID". I.e. if you have a RAID array on the Intel controller then all connected SATA drives has to be part of the RAID.

I need the SSD boot drive to work alone, and with a 3-drive RAID 5 setup on the Intel controller, the only option that remains is to boot from the DriveXpert controller.

RAID 5 really hits the sweet spot for me, giving the performance of RAID 0 with a 1 drive failure tolerance.

Is there a 1156 mobo that can support this RAID setup and a singular boot drive?
 
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GhislainG

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Jul 16, 2008
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I understand that there is a common issue with the Intel SATA controllers such that you can only have "All or none RAID". I.e. if you have a RAID array on the Intel controller then all connected SATA drives has to be part of the RAID.
Click to expand...
That's a totally false statement. You decide if a drive or isn't a RAID member. Even an old ICH5R controller behaves that way. You can connect your SSD and the DVD drives, but don't make them part of the RAID 5. You could even setup more than one RAID if you wanted to. I recommend that you configure the controller for RAID before you install the OS; that way you won't have to make changes in the registry to enable AHCI or RAID drivers at boot time. I currently run a system with an ICH10R and not all of my drives are in a RAID configuration and it runs fine.
 
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FrancoisLuus

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Well I'm glad I was wrong. I have been confused by the following:

In the manual for the p7p55d in the setting up the RAID in bios section it says "Due to chipset limitation, when set any of sata ports to raid mode, all sata ports run at raid mode together".

This following post was also made on newegg as a con of the mobo:

Cons: Has debilitating SATA RAID limitation you don't find out about until you try to set up your RAID. A footnote in the manual tells you that due to a "chipset limitation" if you enable RAID, you must dedicate ALL SATA DRIVES to RAID. You cannot have one drive--say, from your last system--ported over and build a second drive from a RAID 5 made of 3 other SATA drives. This was easy enough to do on my last XFX MB w/NVIDIA chipset.


I see now that the warning in the manual doesn't refer to anything serious.

Thx for the help, now I can finally choose a mobo!
 
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GhislainG

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The controller will be in RAID mode, but that doesn't mean that the drives are. However the RAID drivers need to be installed and that's why I recommend to set the controller in RAID mode before the OS installation in order to have the RAID drivers installed. Then you can switch back to AHCI or IDE without problems as long as you don't have a RAID.

The reviewer on Newegg is correct, but you need to understand his comment. Since all ports are in RAID mode, you can't connect a hard disk from a previous system that was configured as IDE and expect the OS to load properly. Based on your initial post, I don't believe that this could be an issue for you.
 
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alternety

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I am having problems with the last paragraph at least. If you create and use a RAID configuration it appears you are saying that other non-RAID drives will not work as a normal drive?
 
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GhislainG

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It depends on what you call a normal drive. They will work as normal drives connected to a controller configured for RAID or AHCI, not IDE. That by itself certainly isn't an issue. As an example, if you install Windows XP on a system configured for IDE and then move the drive to a system configured for AHCI or RAID, it won't boot. That has always been the case as far back as the ICH5R.
 
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justenvious

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I believe by doing this, you are using a software configuration to set up raid which is slower since it doesn't allow you to put the OS on raid, just the newly inputted data. I only know this due to recent research and I don't know very much about it. So I'm just answering now until an expert comes along as I am also just learning and would like to know the answer.
 
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