RAID on an IP35 pro

jak731

jak731

jak731

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Got a few questions.

I'm planning on setting up a RAID 0 array with two seagate 7200.10 250gb drives. I'm going to do this on an IP35 mobo that i just got today, it came from the ocuk b grade section and has no driver discs or even the backplate.

Does anyone know if you have to setup the RAID using the drivers from a floppy disc or can it all be done in the bios on this board?

Is installing windows any different, I seem to remember it asks about if your using RAID as soon as it loads from the cd?

Also does partitioning the resultant 500GB drive work the same way as it does with a single hard drive?

Finally would I be able to add non RAIDed drives along side the 2 aforementioned drives?

Sorry for all the noob questions, never tried RAID before!
 
1) You create the array in the RAID BIOS.

2) You can have them on a floppy (XP), anything (Vista) or slipstream with nLite.

3) Yes, it appears as one drive to Windows so partition as you like.

4) You can add more drives and have them as single disks on the same controller.
 
Ok thanks the last 2 points are helpful but i'm not sure if i get the first two, when you say RAID bios do you load that from a floppy or such or is it a section of the motherboard bios? I'll be installing XP 32 bit.
 
It's the controllers BIOS, kind of separate to the main one. If you enable RAID in your BIOS you'll get another screen when booting up for the controller and a keystroke to enter its BIOS and set up the array. Perhaps better described as the RAID BIOS as you're using the same hardware whether you use IDE/AHCI/RAID.
For XP's setup to recognise the array you need drivers, this is the part where you have a floppy and hit F6 or slipstream them.
 
Once you've enabled Raid in the main bios, you'll get the Raid Bios screen after post, Ctrl+I to enter setup.

Although, would you not rather have a third drive, and some peace of mind in Raid 5, if a drive fails?
 
Had a mess around with nLite, pretty useful piece of software. Got the RAID 0 array setup and installed windows with no problem. Wanted a fast big drive on a budget mainly for gaming, got a separate drive for work, that's why i went for raid 0.

The performance is a bit lower than i expected:



It tells me in the intel matrix manager that write back cache is disabled, i've read that enabling this can increase the performance quite a bit, but i'm not sure how to do it, can anyone shed any light on this?
 
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I cannot enable write back cache on mine, event log says it's disabled by the driver as soon as I enable it, I'm guessing the RAID has some form of write cache built in.

Also, that graph shows why to use Raid 5.

Just a few MB/s better read speed (My average is something like 126MB/s), apart from that, my raid 5 setup, on the same board is almost identical in performance.

I know what I'd prefer.
 
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AbsenceJam said:
That's better than I'd expect from those drives, and a really strange graph, hardly dips at all.
Click to expand...

I choose these drives because they use a single platter and therefore have high data density and get a read single drive speed average of about 90Mb/s

statix said:
I cannot enable write back cache on mine, event log says it's disabled by the driver as soon as I enable it, I'm guessing the RAID has some form of write cache built in.

Also, that graph shows why to use Raid 5.

Just a few MB/s better read speed (My average is something like 126MB/s), apart from that, my raid 5 setup, on the same board is almost identical in performance.

I know what I'd prefer.
Click to expand...

What you say is true when the write back cache is disabled, i was hoping more for 160Mb/s or greater, i have found someone who had a similar problem albeit with a more complex array who managed to enable the write back cache on an ICH9R and get greater performance, hope this link isn't classed as competitor:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/245106-12-poor-ich9r-raid-performance

Still, he doesn't say how he did it and i have still had no luck.

Also trying to do this on a budget and is my first time playing with RAID, might try other variations in future.
 
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Thanks for that statix, managed to enable it, made a massive difference!



I think it uses a bit more cpu power, but meh.

Interesting to know that you can put more than one array on the same disks, i might reformat and have a 250gb raid 0 and a 125gb raid 1 across the drives.
 
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