My mobo is an Asus P6X58D-E which has two sata III ports. I tried to use a Velociraptor drive but turns out it’s not compatible to this mobo according to a WD tech. Now I would like to get two WD1002FAEX hard drives and set them up in a “raid 0” array & plugged into the sata III ports. Can anyone out there tell me if that’s dooable ?
No Caviar drives will support RAID set ups unless it is “software” RAID.
Read Asus user manual page 4-10 to 4-15; you can use Intel chipset to setup RAID anyway you want. Don’t use Marvell chipset as it creates complications. Just follow the instructions on the user manual. Required drivers are included in the DVD and you also can download updated drivers from Asus global support site. As long as drives are identical, you can use “any” HDDs to create a RAID set. WD just want to sell their expensive enterprise drives to customers for higher profit margin.
Thank you for your directive. I read the section you pointed out. More than helpfull.
I’m just unsure of the viability of setting up the Raid0 environment on the controller that is dedicated to the SATA2 ports using the physical SATA3 ports.
Your Intel ICH10R chipset only supporting SATA 2 (3Gb/s) mode but any new HDD with SATA 3 (6Gb/s) interface should auto configure to SATA 2 mode without any issue. If not you can modify WD drives using a jumper on PIN 5 & 6.
Please look in to attached image.
If I understand you right, I would end up with sata3 drives working in sata2 mode. Would I still benefeit from the faster speeds of the sata3 drives ? Or only get the better speeds of a raid0 array. If I only end up with sata2 speeds then I only need to purchase another matching sata2 drive (for much less money) & make a raid0 array with that.
I was trying to get to the best of this by plugging in 2 sata3 6Gb/s drives into the 2 sata3 ports of my mobo & have those 2 drives in a raid0 array thereby optaining the best speed possible.
You certainly make a valid point about the Marvell driver being a “complication”.
I am not sure you can build RAID 0 from 6Gb/s Marvell chipset. As a single drive it will give you best possible performance as it is SATA 6.
From my experience, I have noticed better performance on disk access when I use RAID 0 on Intel chipset even though it is SATA II (3Gb/s)
If you have two identical drives you can try both options and determine what best for you.
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I really want to thank you for your good input. It has been the most helpfull to me so far.
I set this machine up Jan 18th & originally had a Velociraptor 6GB/s drive but could not get it going successfully using the Marvell controller. WD was real good about doing something to help - they sent me 2 replacement drives over time & a higher level WD techkie told me it was not compatible with my mobo & to send it back to them & they are refunding me for it. So I went through 6 weeks of great frustrations with that.
Right now I have a WD 500GB Sata2 Caviar BLue (mod.#WD5000AAKS-00V0A0) as the C: drive & all my other performance ratings for my machine are around the 7.6 mark except the hard drive which is @ 5.9. So I think I’ll get
another matching drive for C: & raid0 that.
Thank you so much for all your help.
