RAID Support on the X79A GD65 8D?

Barry1987

Barry1987

Barry1987

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Hi,

I have this board and it apparently comes with RAID support on the 4x 6GBps ports.

Do I still need some kind of RAID controller to make this work? I have no idea how it works as I've never had this configuration. I've been deterred from the perceivably long process.

Thanks
 
According to this:
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/X79A-GD65.html#?div=Detail

Your mobo supports RAID in your SATA 1-6 ports trhough the Intel chipset. Ports 7 and 8 doesn't... So, yes, you can set up a RAID system without any suffering.. ;)

Plug the drives, get into Bios, choose the RAID option, reboot, enter into the RAID utility, and choose the drives you wanna put together..

Just remember: if you're planning doing it with a pair of SSD, choose the SATAIII ports, not the SATAII ones; and make sure you have the firmwares up to date..

Best regards.. :)
 
LexLuthor said:
According to this:
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/X79A-GD65.html#?div=Detail

Your mobo supports RAID in your SATA 1-6 ports trhough the Intel chipset. Ports 7 and 8 doesn't... So, yes, you can set up a RAID system without any suffering.. ;)

Plug the drives, get into Bios, choose the RAID option, reboot, enter into the RAID utility, and choose the drives you wanna put together..

Just remember: if you're planning doing it with a pair of SSD, choose the SATAIII ports, not the SATAII ones; and make sure you have the firmwares up to date..

Best regards.. :)
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply and info, mate!

That's great to know as I wasn't really feeling forking out a couple of hundred for a RAID controller.


I'm going to do it with two 500GB 16MB Cache Seagate Barracudas. I have an additional 1TB Barracuda 64MB cache and a 120GB Agility 3 SSD. Am I right in imagining I will be able to get RAID even if the rest are normal AHCI?

Also, is it software or hardware RAID? I heard that software is significantly slower than hardware.
 
I'm going to do it with two 500GB 16MB Cache Seagate Barracudas.

I hope you're doing that RAID only for redundancy/backup, not as your primary/OS drive.. IF yes, then is not worth it.. Only 16MB of cache tells me is a low-end drive, so speeds will remain a bit slow compared to your SSD..

Am I right in imagining I will be able to get RAID even if the rest are normal AHCI?

Yep, you shouldn't have any problem at all.. Just read your motherboard's manual first..

Also, is it software or hardware RAID? I heard that software is significantly slower than hardware.

It's a bit of both, because it's fulfilled by your chipset.. But, it's not the only work it has, so.. You get the point.. ;)
Of course, always is better having a dedicated card for it, but is not worth it if you don't do any photo effects/editing video kind of stuffs that needs really high data transfer speeds..

Best regards.. :)
 
LexLuthor said:
I'm going to do it with two 500GB 16MB Cache Seagate Barracudas.

I hope you're doing that RAID only for redundancy/backup, not as your primary/OS drive.. IF yes, then is not worth it.. Only 16MB of cache tells me is a low-end drive, so speeds will remain a bit slow compared to your SSD..

Am I right in imagining I will be able to get RAID even if the rest are normal AHCI?

Yep, you shouldn't have any problem at all.. Just read your motherboard's manual first..

Also, is it software or hardware RAID? I heard that software is significantly slower than hardware.

It's a bit of both, because it's fulfilled by your chipset.. But, it's not the only work it has, so.. You get the point.. ;)
Of course, always is better having a dedicated card for it, but is not worth it if you don't do any photo effects/editing video kind of stuffs that needs really high data transfer speeds..

Best regards.. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks again Lex

It will be used for storage. The main reason I want to do it is to merge the two hard drives together so I can store all my downloads onto one hard drive rather than having them separated which is how they are now. I am not too worried about speed increase although it would be a bonus! Would I be able to achieve this?
 
There's a danger of loosing data in the process, so yeah, I would recommend doing a backup of your files..
Besides, 2 clean drives behave better than half filled under the RAID software.. ;)

About speeds, theoretically, you should achieve as much as twice the performance of a single drive.. But that's not always truth... Near, yes!!...

Best regards... :)
 
Double would be a bonus with any HDD really! These HDDs are still decent and I get about 40-50MB/s from each I believe (when transferring between both).

I'll backup my data.

Thanks for your help Lex! :)
 
Okay, I have successfully set the two drives to RAID (spanned) in Windows. Not sure if this is the optimal method but I am happy with the outcome.

2x 466GB volumes converted to one 931GB volume. I am copying documents back to the drive (it's 3GBps) from my SATAIII 6GBps drive and am getting speeds of between 110-120MB/s.

What do you think? I guess I want mostly redundancy...
 
Read this:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

And see what fits better for your needs.. ;)

Also, you should make some bench's using Crystaldiskmark or ATTO diskmark..

But, so far, and guessing about your drives, you're getting decent speeds.. I must tell you, however, that those speeds are closer to a single "very nice" drive, like my Barracuda 2TB 64MB cache 7200 rpm, which can do +/- 120MB/s (maybe more, I don't have my test results here, I'm at work).. Imagine if you had 2 of this.. Speeds should be +/- 220MB/s..

Best regards.. :)
 
LexLuthor said:
speeds are closer to a single "very nice" drive, like my Barracuda 2TB 64MB cache 7200 rpm, which can do +/- 120MB/s (maybe more, I don't have my test results here, I'm at work).. Imagine if you had 2 of this.. Speeds should be +/- 220MB/s..
Click to expand...

Barry has spanned the drives not striped them which is why he's getting single drive speeds. Windows will basically fill one then the other rather than use both at the same time.
 
GarethH said:
Barry has spanned the drives not striped them which is why he's getting single drive speeds. Windows will basically fill one then the other rather than use both at the same time.
Click to expand...

You're right.. Didn't realize that.. :eek:
Is that I never have done it that way.. Only striped drives.. ;)

Best regards.. :)
 
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