RAID0 Plus SATA In IDE Mode On ICH7R?

jbloggs · 23 Nov 2006 at 15:07

Just bought the Asus P5WDG2-WS Professional which has the ICH7R con., with 4 SATA ports.

What I plan on doing is attaching 2 x 74GB Raptors to ports 1 & 2, set up RAID0 (and use as boot volume), this I know how to do. According to the manual, I could also have another RAID set up with 2 more HDDs attached to ports 3 & 4, however, my question is, instead of having another kind RAID set up using ports 3 & 4, can I just use 2 HDDs attached to ports 3 & 4 in IDE mode, ie just as ordinary HDDs, at the same time as using 2 x 74GB Raptors in RAID0 on ports 1 & 2 as the boot volume, and if so, do I need to make any changes in the BIOS to facilitate this?

Many thanks.

rpstewart · 23 Nov 2006 at 15:38

Looking at the manual it would appear that the Intel ports operate either all in RAID or all in ATA mode which is a bit of a pain but not much. You should be able to set the non Raptor disks up as single disk arrays within the RAID config.

Your best bet is to create the RAID0 set and get windows installed on that before trying to install the other disks, that way you won't end up with problems caused by boot files getting onto the wrong disk etc.

james32 · 23 Nov 2006 at 15:55

thats why i prefer the nvidia chipset very easy to do this,
i had 2 raid 0 drives and 2 single drives all done from the bios
before even installing windows, could even put sata dvd roms
in ide mode

i not got round to trying intel ICH7Rchipset yet, i have 2 raid 0 drives on it the now ill add a another sata later on see if it goes into ide mode

jbloggs · 23 Nov 2006 at 16:19

rpstewart wrote:

You should be able to set the non Raptor disks up as single disk arrays within the RAID config

Good idea, never thought about that.

james32 wrote:

i have 2 raid 0 drives on it the now ill add a another sata later on see if it goes into ide mode

I would be interested to see how you get on with this!

Many thanks.

snowdog · 24 Nov 2006 at 07:20

I have 3 hdd's on ich7r of wich 2 in raid, just leave it in raid mode...
Raid mode just enables raid bios & raid function, but when not configuring another array in raid bios, the 3rd and 4h hdd's will be standalones...

Snapshot · 24 Nov 2006 at 08:37

I've only done this with the ICH8R but it should be the same. It's as Snowdog says, if you don't put the drives in a RAID they're just there standalone.

Jonathan

jbloggs · 24 Nov 2006 at 08:43

snowdog & Snapshot:

Thanks for your replys, which clear up any ambiguities on this subject.

james32 · 24 Nov 2006 at 12:23

well i stuck a 3rd hard disc on the ich7
and it shows 2 drives under disc management even though i only put
1 drive, seems to work ok and the boot up screen shows its non raid.

not as good as the Nvidia raid bios software.

jbloggs · 24 Nov 2006 at 13:26

james32:

Thanks for the feed back.

james32 · 24 Nov 2006 at 14:42

forgot to say this was on vista, so mabaye xp is diffrent

jbloggs · 25 Nov 2006 at 18:15

Just a bit of an update, was able to setup RAID0 on ICH7R on SATA ports 1 & 2, and then, as suggested connected other SATAs to ports 3 & 4 to run in IDE mode, no problems whatsoever, it runs well.

james32 · 25 Nov 2006 at 19:40

thanks for the update joe

does your drive just show as 1 drive under disc management?

jbloggs · 26 Nov 2006 at 13:57

james:

does your drive just show as 1 drive under disc management?

Yes, they show up as follows:

My RAID0 set up has 3 partitions, each of which shows up as 1 device in DM, ie C:\, D:\, & E:\, the other 2 HDDs are unpartitioned, and each also show up as 1 device, ie, F:\ & G:\, and the last HDD on the Marvel con. shows up as 1 device also, ie H:\.

meansizzler · 26 Nov 2006 at 23:11

Thanks , always wondered if this was possible, RAID array + seperate drives on single Intel Controller...