Intel S5000PAL Board Raid Controller

Sirrel Squirrel · 3 Jun 2010 at 11:31

I have a server with this board and the sata controller is currently running in AHCI mode. I want to add another 4 hard drives and RAID 0 them. Can I switch the controller to RAID mode without reinstalling Windows on the boot drive, which will not form part of the RAID?

Sp00n · 3 Jun 2010 at 11:50

No I don't think you will be able to, the ESB2 raid controller is applicable to all the SATA ports so once you switch over to raid it will affect those 2 ports as well.

What you could do is image the current server, then create 2 volumes, one for the boot and the RAID 0 for the data.

Can't see any other way of doing it unless you get hold of another RAID card.

Sirrel Squirrel · 3 Jun 2010 at 11:59

Thanks I thought that might be the case as with most controllers, someone said to me it was possible but they couldn't shed any more light on how to do it, I'll image the drive when I get some free time, I was hoping there'd be a quick solution other than using Windows striping.

matthab · 3 Jun 2010 at 13:01

I thought with that controller you could disable raid on particular ports.

Sirrel Squirrel · 3 Jun 2010 at 13:41

Don't suppose you know how? I can't see anything in the motherboard bios or the controller bios.

Ringiho · 3 Jun 2010 at 14:34

Sirrel Squirrel said:
Don't suppose you know how? I can't see anything in the motherboard bios or the controller bios.

You can't on those boards

SATA in ACHI mode or RAID! It is just an on/off switch basically