RAID on P5B Deluxe

Hey all,

I have done searching through the forum and was wondering if there was anyone that had a set up close enough to what I wan to do to confirm it can be done and what results I could expect with it on the P5B Deluxe / E6600 combo.

1st RAID
RAID 0 2x74 gig Raptors

2nd RAID
RAID 5 4 (hopefully 5) x Seagate 7200.10 320s (maybe go with 500's)

Now I know that there are physically enough SATA ports on the board for all 7 drives internal but I don't know if I can use all 5 Seagates in a RAID 5 while still having my raptor RAID. If I have to get a controller card I will but would be nice to not have to get it. If so any recomendations on a good one.

~jtjuska

there is 2 raid devices on the board, although from what the device manager shows, the Jmicro goes through the intel to get there anyways.

the Jmicro "raid" is like really stupid, the intel has MANY available internal ports, but the jmicro only has ONE internal Sata port, and the PATA (ide) port, and the External port.
because of that to raid with the Jmicro, is to run an external sata to sata connector, back into the box. or use an external raid box connected via the external sata connector. that sux.
i had problems with my IDE DVD player when the Jmicro was configured differentaly than IDE, but i never did complete testing jmicro raid, because of the external to internal cable needed.

so you going to have a blasingly fast super duper 1500rpm raid 0, for the system and speed, then have a large mirrored set of data disks?
sounds cool, especially with the new segate drives, the maxtors were hotter :-(.

In the Storage part of this forum, is a discussion about the intel "MATRIX" driver for intel raid, that does some tricks, you might find interesting. i dont because it complexes things, and makes a broken raid a bigger problem, but it was about having raid 0 and raid mirroring in the same drive, i assume by parting it out, and running software raid.

there is nothing else i can tell you, if you get an external card, get one with real ONBOARD capacity, not a cheapo one, i researched it, and there is a lot of "software" based type ones, and the hardware based ones were still high costs $200+.

oh and look in the manuel about enabling that PCI-X1 slot, which i thought might be a choice for a raid or scsi card, something about wreckking the x16 capability of the other PCI-E slot to have that thing enabled?
i dont understand it, but it might need to be understood if you tried to use that slot for a raid card.

and that chip down there controlling the sata gets hot , even when it isnt doing much real work. doesnt have much of a sink on it either.

Ya I was looking at the Matrix RAID stuff and I love the idea but since I am going to be buying the drives anyway i just wanted to maximize the use of them. I will most likely end up getting all the drives and testing until something either works or i give up and buy a controller card for them. Thanks for your replies!!

~jtjuska