SATA: IDE mode or RAID mode ?

[mrk]

My mobo is an Abit KW7 and just wnated to know whether I would benefit from using RAID mode for both my SATA channels, when RAID mode is enabled the bios allows me to choose which SCSI controller to boot off (I have 2 sata drives, 1 with windows 1 with docs) so it appears to be able to boot off a single drive when the SATA controller is in SATA mode but currently I use it in IDE mode which uses the ATA133 mode - Am I right in thinking that if I use RAID mode which enables the SATA controller to be seen as a SCSI controller that I'd benefit from the increased performance of SATA150 ?

Here's a phonecam pic of the bios screen for the option if it helps

Thanks guys!

 

[Joe42]

It has a sata and ide mode?

Some boards call sata mode ide mode. If it has both i've no idea what ide mode does.

To answer your question, if its a sata controller its running in sata 150. Raid is a completely different thing, and doesn't bring any performance benefits in a desktop scenario anyway. Scsi is also a completely different thing and if its a sata controller scsi isn't involved.

 

[mrk]

IDE mode uses both SATA channels as IDE channels so you dont need to install any drivers when installing windows and no SATA specific drivers are needed in windows, it is seen as 2 extra IDE channels for use by any SATA drive.

What I wanted to know is if I use it in RAID mode can I still boot off my one windows disk and be able to access my 2nd docs disk as I currently am but of course in RAID mode having the faster speed of SATA ?

 

[Joe42]

I don't think sata mode will be any faster than ide unless it has command queueing or something but iirc thats only in sata 2.

Raid is not a mode, its something entirely different and its pretty much useless on the desktop anyway.

 

[kitten]

RAID uses multiple disks to either improve performance or reliability.

If you use a RAID controller in RAID mode you will need at least two disks. RAID 1 will put identical data on both disks (mirroring) Slower writes, faster reads. If a disk fails data is OK as it is "mirrored" onto another disk. RAID 0 or striping improves performance of both reads and writes by using 2 or more disks as one logical drive(One drive letter, two or more disks) this increases bandwidth of the storage system. However if one drive fails all data is lost.

As mentioned by mrk
If you use the controller in RAID mode then you will need to F6 windoze during install to load the controllers drivers. In IDE mode the controller behaves as if a standard IDE drive is connected and windoze has built in drivers for IDE.

Only in a raid 0 with several disks will the performance difference between SATA I and IDE be realised. an E-IDE interface will allow data transfer at 133Mb/s, SATA I @ 150Mb/s and SATA II @ 300Mb/s These are maximum speeds of the interface and it is shared amongst all devices on the same channel. (no single desktop drive will be limited by either of these interface types)

Even the fastest single drives in either SATA or IDE do not use all the bandwidth available. Therefore in the average single drive desktop system the user would be hard pushed to see a peformance difference between an IDE and a SATA drive. SATA II has NCQ and brings something else to the table that I have not yet experienced. Others will have to highlight the benefits of SATA II

Unless you need disk speed for video encoding or security of data, RAID is pointless. With a single drive, I doubt one could percieve a difference between a SATA controller in native (SATA) mode or in IDE mode. If you are not going to RAID then I would leave the controller in IDE mode for ease of install and ease of use.

There is a great deal of info out there regarding RAID, its benefits and drawbacks.

good luck

 

[mrk]

Thanks for the info guys, as a final test I ran HSTACH on bth my sata-nxq drives, seems it's all good

Maxtor 200gb (my docs)

Seagate 80GB (windows)

#

Think I'll leave it in IDE mode!