RAID 0 on Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP

1kiwi

1kiwi

1kiwi

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AHCI on Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP - HELP!

Hi Guys,

I’m currently planning on building the following:

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-258-AS

I’m still undecided about the thermal compound.
Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP Intel P35
Western Digital Raptor 74GB X 2 (Planned RAID 0 config)
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency
LiteOn 20x DVD+/-RW/RAM LightScribe
BFG GeForce 8800 GT
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)
OCZ Technology StealthXStream 600W Active PFC
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

However, I’m now very concerned about the RAID compatibility of this board. I’ve never setup RAID before and would preferably like to setup my new computer without having to buy a PCI RAID card.

Now I’ve had a look around and I managed to find the following threads.

According to Schnippzle, you can:

“however its become apparent that I have to use the external sata port and one of the internal sata ports to get raid to actually work I’m planning on having both raptors internal and running an esata-> sata cable into my case and to the raptor to solve the problem of not having an internal RAID controller. Does any1 have any experience with this / what’s the performance like relative to native internal RAID support? Should I just invest in a RAID controller card or another mobo instead?”

And jbloggs:

“Enable the ICH9R in BIOS, Save & Exit, CTRL + I to enter RAID setup utility, set up RAID, name, stripe size etc, exit, reboot, re-enter BIOS, and make sure your Intel Raid volume is showing up in HDD priority, and is set as 1st, then make sure it is set as 2nd boot device, your DVD rewriter set as 1st boot device, Save and Exit, as you don't have a floppy (which is needed to extract the drivers from the floppy), simply boot from the Vista DVD (which has ICH9R drivers contained in it), as soon as it starts to boot, it will ask you to press F6 to specify another Device, so press F6, it will load files etc, then come to the agreement etc, it will ask you to specify the device where you want to install, choose ICH8R/ICH9R, then format etc, rest is the same as normal Windows install, when Desktop appears, 1st install Intel Chipset Software, then reboot and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager...then at a later date, when you get a floppy you can update the ICH9R drivers...fin!”

Now the first work around suggests that putting one drive on the internal and then one drive on the external within a RAID 0 configuration is bad and that using a conversion cable is necessary to fix the problem.

The second work-around suggests that its ok to use an internal and external cable.

I really want to RAID 0 my build to get the most out of the raptors but don’t really want to change the MB as it appears that its one of the best all round boards for overclocking the G0s.

Can anyone help?
 
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I tried Raid 0 on this board and its a waste of time with XP.

Its very easy to setup using the existing internal SATA ports but I encountered several data corruption errors which I think are a result of Raid 0 not liking the fact that I had a dual boot PC with Vista + XP as after a few days it would corrupt the Vista boot files on the C drive (where the Raid 0 was) so I had to reinstall several times in the space of a few weeks. Gave up in the end and just went for a faster HD (Samsung 750GB is much faster than a Raptor X in Vista. XP is slightly faster with the Raptor X on seek times so must be something to do with the 32MB cache on the 750).

My advice to you is ditch Raid 0 & get a couple of: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-054-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940
instead as these are not much dearer but the performance is close. Raptor wins on seek times in scenarios where you are using a lot of small files but otherwise these are the drives to go for.

Also do some more research on Raptors with 8800's as is some rare scenarios people have had major hardware clash issues whether this was causing the corruption issues I had I never bothered looking into.
 
The most important thing about RAID 0 and data corruption is the stripe size. For optimal speed you really want something like a 16kb or 32kb stripe size, but this increases the possibility of data corruption, so most people use 64kb or 128kb, at which point it all gets a bit pointless. I'd just go for 1 drive for boot right now to be honest. For the sort of money you're talking about on 2 74Gb Raptors you can get a very good single platter Samsung or WD drive that will have very fast access times and be quieter and cooler too.
 
Wow, thanks all for you suggestions.

AWPC: From what I can understand, you suffered severe corruption errors when you attempted RAID 0 with a couple of raptors in a dual boot setup.

Did you ever try to run RAID 0 under vista? What were your results? I already have a copy of vista business which is what I plan to use.

I checked out the drive that you suggested and it appears that in terms of performance (not seek times) it is a clear winner.

WJA96: It appears that the F1 above is the clear performance winner within the current market. Would you suggest using this drive as my boot drive? I already have about 750GB of storage so TBH I was only going to use the raptors as a boot / system drive.

Would I minimise my chances of data corruption when using a RAID controller? I plan to regularly backup all sensitive information onto portable hard drives anyway.

Any suggestions?
 
I have just bought a pair of 8Gb SLC SSD drives which I am going to run in RAID 0. They were £85 each incl. delivery, so pretty much the same as two Raptors. They are VERY quick indeed. So quick I've ordered another pair so I'll have a 4 drive RAID 0 array with a 8Mb stripe. Because they are digital I don't foresee the same issues with corruption as magnetic drives.

And in answer to query about the single platter F1, yes, I would suggest one of them as your boot drive if you don't fancy the SSD array as suggested above.
 
The SSD array sounds interesting. I haven't considered it as they appear a little expensive at the moment. What model did you get? I found a Transcend 2.5" SATA Solid State Disk 32GB Disk for around £100. It's amazing that all computers within the next few years will turn to solid state!

In terms of installation for the P5K, Would i attach one drive to the internal SATA port and then the other drive to the external port as suggested above? Then use the 16gb RAID 0 drive as a boot / program files drive only?

Also, does the motherboard just view the SSD drive as a normal drive?

Thanks again.
 
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beh* said:
The SSD array sounds interesting. I haven't considered it as they appear a little expensive at the moment. What model did you get? I found a Transcend 2.5" SATA Solid State Disk 32GB Disk for around £100. It's amazing that all computers within the next few years will turn to solid state!
Click to expand...

I've got the 8GB Transcend SATA SSD Solid State which is SLC. The 32Gb drive is the other, slower type. It's a 3.5" hard disk, just like any other 3.5" HDD. It also comes in 2.5" size too.

beh* said:
In terms of installation for the P5K, Would i attach one drive to the internal SATA port and then the other drive to the external port as suggested above? Then use the 16gb RAID 0 drive as a boot / program files drive only?
Click to expand...

Why not have them both on internal ports?

beh* said:
Also, does the motherboard just view the SSD drive as a normal drive?
Click to expand...

Yes. It is a normal SATA HDD, it just doesn't have the same bits inside.
 
Oh OK, LOL sorry about the silly questions. Is there any difference between the 8GB 2.5" and 3.5" speed wise? Also, are you going to post any benchmarks once your RAID array is built? I would be really interesting in the read/write seek times!
 
beh* said:
Oh OK, LOL sorry about the silly questions. Is there any difference between the 8GB 2.5" and 3.5" speed wise? Also, are you going to post any benchmarks once your RAID array is built? I would be really interesting in the read/write seek times!
Click to expand...

As far as I know the only difference between the 2.5" and the 3.5" is the 2.5" is slipped into a carrier to make the 3.5" drive.

I will put up some benchies once I get all 4 disks.
 
Thanks for your reply WJA96. I must admit that you have me interested. The reviews are difficult to come by for the Transcend SSD's however i did find this one which benches a PATA model. Any idea why the 16gb PATA disk performs so bad.

Do you have links for a bench / review of the 8gb / 16gb 2.5/3.5" Transcend SATA SSD SLC drive?

Thanks again for your quick responses.
 
Hi Guys,

I thought i would continue this thread as i started it. In the end, i went with a 74 GB raptor as i already have a number of other slower drives that store the bulk of my data. My plan is to buy 2 X 320 F1s later and RAID them. However, i have a new problem.

Can anyone tell me how to setup AHCI mode for my raptor using vista 64 on the P5K Premium? I have the below setup which is waiting at home for me to setup this weekend :)

I have read through the **- Official Asus P5K Thread -** which suggests that i simply turn it on within the bios and then boot from the vista business X64 DVD. Is this correct?

Furthermore, is there anything that i should activate within the P5K bios prior to installing vista?

I was going to flash the bios to version 0504. Is this still the killar bios to use?

Cheers,

Paul
 
Sorry to bumb this guys, but i'm building tomorrow so i really need you help. From what i can tell, you really need to run your P5K in AHCI mode to get the most out of your harddrives. Is the setup as stated above?
 
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