RAID help on a P%K(C)

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 17:08

RAID help on a P5K(C)

Hi all,

I am having a bit of a headache trying to understand the instructions for installing RAID on my motherboard.

The instructions state:

"Install an internal SATA drive and an external SATA drive on your system" - why do I need to install an external SATA drive to configure RAID for my two drives?

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 17:26

The Asus P5KC only supports RAID on the JMicron controller, not the Intel one. Unfortunately one of the two JMicron ports is routed to the rear I/O panel for use with an external drive.

Therefore in short you can only do RAID on that board with one internal disk and one external one.

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 17:34

I don't believe it! :mad:

I knew it was all to good to be true; my build was going fine until I hit this. I guess I am shopping for a RAID controller?

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 17:50

Yup, either that or a new mobo I'm afraid.

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:22

Why on earth would anyone want to RAID an external and an internal?

helmutcheese · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:27

I have never worked that out either, some of the Asus AM2 have that. :confused:

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:31

Can any readers in-the-know please spec me a RAID controller card? I am setting up a RAID0 set, SATA2, 2x320GB WD AAKS drives. I would like no bottlenecks on transfer rate.

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:34

The controller supports RAID but the mobo manufacturer has used one of the ports for eSATA so it's more a case of "you can" rather than a selling point.

Can't come up with a sensible reason though.

helmutcheese · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:35

Well you need a PCI-E card, the PCI ones run on a 133MB/Sec bus so thats a bottleneck for 2x HDD Raid burst or if using many drives the actual transfer speeds.

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:39

helmutcheese said:
Well you need a PCI-E card, the PCI ones run on a 133MB/Sec bus so thats a bottleneck for 2x HDD Raid burst or if using many drives the actual transfer speeds.

I have a spare PCI-E x16 slot on the motherboard.

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 18:45

JimpsEd said:
Can any readers in-the-know please spec me a RAID controller card? I am setting up a RAID0 set, SATA2, 2x320GB WD AAKS drives. I would like no bottlenecks on transfer rate.

If either the PCIe 1x or the secondary 16x slots are free there are a few options. OCUK have a 2 port Adaptec 1x card for £30 or so or a four port 4x one for £75. There are other cards from Highpoint but you'd need to go elsewhere for them.

Sarduk · 10 Aug 2007 at 19:04

So these cards will be able to sustain the burst from two (RAID0) hard drives (SATAII)?

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 19:43

Yeah, there's plenty of bandwidth available - 250Mb/s from a 1x slot and 1Gb/s from a 4x one. A SATA drive on a 300Mb/s capable interface (SATAII is just a marketing name, not a standard) will burst up to about 260-270Mb/s but it's the sustained transfer rate which is more important, that's about 80Mb/s for a decent drive and 150Mb/s or so for a 2 disk RAID0 array so a 1x card is more than adequate.

F4810 · 6 Nov 2007 at 20:54

Has anyone tried RAID on the Jmicron controller on the P5KC? You can buy cables that convert esata to sata but it would mean routing the cable from the back of the case into the case. Cables are £5 vs £35 for a RAID controller so wanted to know whether it was any good.

rpstewart · 7 Nov 2007 at 08:54

The JMicron controller isn't the greatest but it's perfectly adequate - there are plenty of folk running RAID0 on Gigabyte 965-DS3s which use the same controller.