getting 2 sata drives, raid questions...

[chris_gilroy]

hello all, finally getting my 2 wd raptors, been wondering, I have a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo, was wondering what all do i need to get these drives running in raid? (software/firmware-wise)...

Best BIOS rev?
Best nForce drivers
The onboard SATA is Silicon Image, is there anything I need to do with upgrading the firmware with that?


thanks guys...

 

[HammerBot]

Read the RAID FAQ.
Best driver/firmware? Use the latest. I don't think you can upgrade the hipoint firmware. AFAIK its bundled with the PC bios. Anyway don't attempt to upgrade with anything you find on hipoints website. Use only what ASUS provides.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[1Brent]

I would find out what you have for your onboard SATA I have the same Main Board and it uses Silicon Image Sata make sure you know your REV. first and your bios if it is silicon image drivers for the onboard sata you might want to consider going to a PCI sata addapter I found the onboard not very good.

Good luck

Cheers
Brent

 

[chris_gilroy]

hmm, could you provide some insight as to what you mean by "I found the onboard not very good."? Bad read/write speeds?

 

[1Brent]

Sorry I was writing this at work. Ok when I used the onboard Sata on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe. The use of it to start was hard to navigate I found you coulden't Change the cluster size I cant remember about the block size. It woulden't boot properly after awhile it was slow jerky when I did write speed tests of differen't configerations the tests failed miserably. I then was fedup and wen't out and bought a PCI addapter (high point 1520) and hven't had a problem since it is easy to use and there is a wide veriaty of options with it. Very happy with it now and write speeds or any speed for that matter it is just plain fast My settings are 128 Block and 16K cluster size I can have two moniters going playing a game on one and music and data on the other with out any problem

I hope this helps you in your disision
happy computing

Cheers
Brent

 

[HammerBot]

That board shouldn't happen to be equipped with the Promise lite controller? It is know (see RAID FAQ) that this controller does not allow you to change the cluster size. So you should avoid mobos with anything 'lite'. In general both Promise and Highpoint makes excellent RAID controllers and theres no difference between a PCI card based or mobo based controller of the same type.
Ofcourse if you really want high end, check out 3ware. They make great (and expensive) RAID controllers that provides more RAID levels than typical embedded controllers.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[1Brent]

Very good piont but in test High piont has beet 3ware I have a 3ware in my other computer and it has about the same of everything as highpoint and highpoint is less expensive.I have no troubles with either one.

Cheers
Brent