Installing 2 hard discs without using RAID

shandy1948 · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:39

I've just purchased a new SATA 300gb Seagate Barracuda to add to my old SATA 160gb Seagate Barracuda (which is full). My rig is based around a Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard.

I'm planning on reformatting the old drive, and reinstalling windows on the new one. I'll just use the old drive for additional media storage.

The A8V deluxe has two onboard RAID controller (VIA and Promise). I want to use both drives as 'standalone' drives - i.e. I do not want them to be in a RAID array.

Anyone have any ideas how to do this? (i.e. how to prevent the motherboard from trying to use them as RAID array) Or will it just 'know' they they are different size hard drives and default to running them as standalone drives? Or will it object to having two 'different' hard drives plugged into a RAID controller.

Secondly, which controller would be better for running two standalone drives? Alternatively, should I plug one into each controller?

sja360 · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:57

you have to set them up as a RAID array they wont automatically setup as a RAID array. as for which is better i think it was the Via that was better? it wont make that much difference though maybe 1-2% performance difference at a guess.

Jimi · 7 Apr 2006 at 15:59

The two controllers are probably the same performance to be honest. If you want RAID, you have to set it up yourself, it's not automatic.

EDIT: Beat me to it.

shandy1948 · 7 Apr 2006 at 17:15

At the moment, my 160gb HD is plugged into the Promise controller, as there are apparently all sorts of problems trying to install an original XP CD (i.e. pre SP1) onto a SATA drive using the VIA controller.

So, can anyone confirm that the Promise controller definitely supports JBOD? The Asus website confirms that the Via controller support JBOD, but it only mentions RAID when describing the Promise controller.

mattio1980 · 7 Apr 2006 at 20:24

put a post in the hard drive section someone will beable to help

Jimi · 7 Apr 2006 at 22:35

shandy1948 said:
At the moment, my 160gb HD is plugged into the Promise controller, as there are apparently all sorts of problems trying to install an original XP CD (i.e. pre SP1) onto a SATA drive using the VIA controller.

So, can anyone confirm that the Promise controller definitely supports JBOD? The Asus website confirms that the Via controller support JBOD, but it only mentions RAID when describing the Promise controller.

Why wouldn't it?

I think it would be pretty poor if the controller would only allow you to have your HDDs in RAID.