GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

[felix_w]

Hi all again,

I have seen many people in forums that take advantage of the simultaneous Raid-0 and Raid-1 setup in just a pair of disks.
E.g. the most usual i've seen is a 100GB Raid-0 Array for OS & Progz, and a 416GB (all the rest) Raid-1 Array for data backup on a pair of Seagates 7200.11 500GB 32Mb Cache...
With this setup, they can have 7.5-8.5 ms Access Time on the Raid-0 array and backup efficiency on the Raid-1 array, with just 2 disks.
It is confirmed that if one disk fails, the data on the Raid-1 part of the second disk are accessible.
Someone reffered to this setup as "Raid 0,1" - i don't know if it is correct.

Unfortunately i haven't seen anyone having this setup on a non-Intel onboard controller (all i've seen use the ICHX-R controllers)...

The question is...is it possible to setup my pair of disks in the same way an the SB600 controller of my GA-MA790X-DS4 ? Or is it a feature belonging only to Intel Onboard Raid Controllers?

Awaiting your opinions.

Thank you.

Felix

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Wow, wish I could help ya but I have no clue about non intel chips. There is some Nvidia users here, hopefully someone will help you soon with this

[felix_w]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Well,

Gigabyte Technical Support Division responded (only 1,5 day!!!) that only one Raid mode can be setup on 2 disks...that's ok...now i wil havw to use 4 disks for my "fast & safe" setup...

Another question is created though (since i am new to Raid)...

Gigabyte Raid Setup Guide on the board's manual shows that i can select the size of the array...Is that correct? For example:
2 x 160 GB Disks --> Raid-0 , can i make an array of 160GB's and leave the rest 160 to make a second array?
Or is it the same to make a Raid-0 array of the whole disks space and then use XP or Vista setup or even some Disk Management Programm to make 2 or 3 partitions?
Will that affect Access times and/or Speed ?

Thanx

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Yes, you can. And or you can make 160 raid, and 160 non raid

And yes, you could also use a partition app to make partitions within either raid, or within one large one

As for the speeds, I am not sure, but I do have 4 partitions across my 500GB raid, with a quad boot they all seem just as fast to me

[felix_w]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

I guess Gigabyte support maybe misunderstood my question...

YES : DS4 has the ability to create both Raid-0 & Raid-1 simultaneously on just a pair of HDD's...

Tried on a pair of Seagate's 160GB 7200.10 SII hdd's...A Raid-0 stripe of 75GB (37.5+37.5) and the rest of the space left combined to a Raid-1 stripe of 122.5GB...

Some Intel fanboys supported that no way an AMD board could support this feature, but...

My current setup is on 2 WD6400AAKS 54GB Raid-0 & 570GB Raid-0...Not Bad performance huh?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Looks good!

Yeah, I may have also accidentally missed what you were asking as well. This was long ago so I am not sure what I thought about your question. But it looks like I thought you asked about one or the other?

Nice to see you can do both on just 2 disks!

So, you have a 54GB RAID 0, and 570GB RAID 1 right? 54GB is the OS, and the other storage is that how you set it up?

[felix_w]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Exactly...From Raid-0 volume i use only 20GB for XP 32bit (& progs for work, so i keep this installation clean) and 30GB for Vista 64bit which i haven't installed yet...
Raid-1 Volume is for storing My documents, Music & Work files backup...
I plan to set one of the 2 160GB's i got for Ubuntu, Pagefile from both windows installations & maybe a spare WinXP 32bit Install for hard times...
Need to have time to set them up though...

The weird thing is that everyone i asked in local forums (mostly intel users) said that AMD is so far behind in storage controllers that the SB600 would not work that way & i should not spend my money for such a wasted plan....

Happy after all...Good Performance & Data Safety in one ...

Thank you all for your replies & help...

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA790X-DS4 and RAID 0,1 on a pair of HDD's

Nice to see you found otherwise. Thanks for posting back as well, incase someone wants to know in the future

Stop back anytime if you think we can help, glad your system is working as you wanted it to!