RAID 0 across PATA and SATA?

niteflite01 · 8 Feb 2006 at 13:27

Hi there

I have two drives as follows in an Nforce4 chipsetted board (DFI NF4 Infinity) :

300GB PATA 16MB Cache.
300GB SATA 16MB Cache.

Would I see any great, noticable permance benefit in putting both drives in a RAID-0 config or would it be better to install XP on the SATA drive and use the PATA drive as an mp3 store, effectively?

Many thanks!

semi-pro waster · 8 Feb 2006 at 13:41

To the best of my knowledge it would be impossible to link your PATA and SATA drive in a Raid0 array. For a Raid0 array it is best if the drives are identical and almost certainly have to be on the same controller which they wouldn't be if you are mixing PATA and SATA.

I'd think that you are best to do as you suggest and put XP on the SATA and use the other as a storage drive.

//edit it may be possible if you were to get a SATA to IDE adapter but I'd advise against it as you are simply adding another thing to go wrong.

niteflite01 · 8 Feb 2006 at 14:34

I think the NForce4 chipset and drivers allow RAID spanning PATA and SATA?

semi-pro waster · 8 Feb 2006 at 14:42

niteflite01 said:
I think the NForce4 chipset and drivers allow RAID spanning PATA and SATA?

You could be right, my knowledge of the Raid features on Nforce4 is pretty slim, that doesn't alter the fact that I wouldn't recommend it though

It isn't worth the extra risk of data loss for most users, the Nforce4 spanning abilities may be specific tools once in Windows as that dimly rings some bells but I'm not sure at all.

smids · 8 Feb 2006 at 14:42

Yeah, I'm not sure on this either because the nF4 controller is the RAID controller and it supports both. The best way is to try it and find out tbh.

Skilldibop · 9 Feb 2006 at 12:03

I doubt it'll work. Raid works when you have 2 disks of equal size and speed. The interface *i think* has to be the same speed for both disks. It's probably doable but not without a PCI raid card with SATA and IDE conections i wouldn't think.

smids · 9 Feb 2006 at 13:33

Skilldibop said:
I doubt it'll work. Raid works when you have 2 disks of equal size and speed. The interface *i think* has to be the same speed for both disks. It's probably doable but not without a PCI raid card with SATA and IDE conections i wouldn't think.

But the nForce4 controller specifically says RAID spanning across PATA and SATA - don't know what they mean exactly by this but it's worth a shot.

Skilldibop · 9 Feb 2006 at 13:42

that probably means it supports PATA raid and SATA raid in separate arrays, but not mixed arrays. I'm pretty sure you can't mix interfaces. Like i'm sure you can't mix U160 and u320 SCSI in arrays.

smids · 9 Feb 2006 at 13:46

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hopeful about this but also bear in mind that the nF4 controller can also use the SATA ports as pseudo PATA ports (for the purpose of not requiring drivers at F6 windows) and this is why I see a glimmer...

.

Someone needs to try it out tbh...

Skilldibop · 9 Feb 2006 at 13:56

Yeah by all means try, but i severely doubt that NVraid is that clever and co-ordinating serial and parallel data screams to mesh nicely in raid is seriously tricky stuff.

I can see how your thinking, but making windows setup think a sata drive is a PATA drive is one thing, making it behave like a PATA disk at a hardware level is another, and far far harder to pull off.

ecksmen · 9 Feb 2006 at 19:15

I'm sure it would work, I've always thought it was possible. It's all software raid anyhows, so its all done on the cpu. You can use different harddrives, its just not recommended that it's done, but it does work. The array will just run at the slowest speed etc...

LeperousDust · 9 Feb 2006 at 20:07

Yes depending on the controller it will msost probably work. My P4C800-e Deluxe has a promise RAID controller which controls 2 SATA ports and 1 PATA, you can use either of these to set up different RAID arrays including RAID10. The horrible thing being you'd need two drives on one cable though so its pointless, but i can definately acheive RAID0 or 1 over PATA and SATA. Even though technically the PATA is a little slower than the SATA and they will both be different drives the RAID controller chip makes up for that, by just sending the data at the rate of the slower drive. Also hard drives dont need to be exact replica's to RAID, especially when in comes to software RAID.