SATA raid on Asus sk8v motherboard

termee · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 76

I'm building a system with the Asus Sk8v motherboard. I am going to use 2 SATA drives in a RAID 0. The board has VIA and Promise controllers. Which one is better? Also, is it possible to do hardware raid with this setup or do i have to do software raid?

Little Nemo · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 2:39 pm Post subject:

Basically, all of the on-board RAID controllers are not hardware RAID, but software RAID as you need additional drivers to implement RAID functionality.

Don't confuse this with Linux software RAID, however, which is much more flexible and even allows you to combine disks/partitions of different types and on different controllers into one RAID system.

For true hardware RAID (which means that the operating system will see the RAID array as one SCSI device) I recommend 3ware escalade controllers. They have been supported in Linux for quite some time and are very stable. I'm using them in two servers, and they haven't failed me yet (unlike the low-cost on-board RAID controllers).

termee · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 76

Which is going to be faster, because the RAID cards draw from the PCI bus? Or do the onboard controllers use the PCI bus? Also, is it worth the money to buy a RAID card if I'm only doing a RAID 0 with 2 disks?

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 5:33 pm Post subject:

The Promise controller is on the PCI bus.
The VIA controller is part of the southbridge.
I would guess the VIA controller would be a little faster.

If you are just doing RAID0 with 2 disks, check out this thread.
Software RAID 0 HOW-TO

termee · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 76

All of the true hardware raid cards look like they use PCI-X which that board doesn't support, so software raid is probably the best way to go.

Is there any difference in speed between using IDE drivers or SCSI drivers?

termee · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 76

Does anyone know?

Little Nemo · Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 1:03 pm Post subject:

For 3ware controllers (which I recommend for their Linux compatibility, the driver has been in the kernel for quite some time), there is a compatibility list at this URL: http://www.3ware.com/products/pdf/Motherboard_compatibility_list.pdf. I see an Asus SK8N board there, not the SK8V. On the other hand, I'm using 3ware controllers in two boards that are much older and are not in that list, either. In our machines, the cards are sitting in PCI-64 slots. You certainly do not need a PCI-X slot.