Alright, so I finally got two identical hard drives and am ready to set up a raid 0 array using my mobo's onboard raid controller. Problem I find though, while reading through my manual, I discovered that it says this ["The Promise PDC20376 chipset only supports one Master HDD on the PRI_RAID1 connector."] So it then gives me a list of how to set up my raid array, here are my three choices: [Connect one Parallel ATA HDD and one Serial ATA HDD; Connect one Serial ATA HDD to each serial ATA connector; Connect one Serial ATA HDD to raid connector and one to Serial ATA connector.] I don't want any of this though. All I'm trying to do is set up a raid 0 array for my two WD 80gb SE hard drives to be read under striping mode of course, and don't care at all about serial ATA. Can someone tell me if I can set up these two hard drives on this onboard raid controller, or if I have to go purchase a seperate controller. Thanks.

No, you cannot put a slave drive on the PDC20376's IDE port... so you're going to have to spend a little money to get a striping array going with those drives. Here are three solutions:

1. Buy two SATA-to-Parallel adapters. You should be able to do so at a reasonably current Mom & Pop computer shop for $30 an adapter. You can then attach your hard drives to the two SATA connectors on the PDC20376.

2. Buy one SATA-to-Parallel adapter and attach one drive to an SATA connector and the other to the PDC20376's IDE connector.

3. Buy an ATA133 RAID PCI controller. This will run you between $25 and $75.

I actually bought two WD Raptor SATA drives and love how they perform on the RAID controller, but your drives are definitely nothing to sneeze at--they're quick, and those 8MB caches are really nice to have. So get them striped... it's a big performance boost.

Thanks for the help man, despite the news that it looks like I gotta spend even more money when I don't have much left, but it won't be too expensive. Here's another question, is it true you gotta zero out both hard drives before creating the array, or is it just a normal format?

I have that same board and two of the exact same HD's, the WD 80G SE's. I actually bought the SATA adaptors but had a weird problem. W/ both drives connected using Iwill I2S SATA-IDE's, the PDC20376 bios would complain that there's improper interrupts, check for bus mastering on the "PCI Slot" and that the array was offline. Or w/ one drive setup on the PRI_RAID1, one off a SATA, it would say that there's nothing attached to the Fasttrack adaptor! This all happened after a cold boot (turn on). Press ctrl+alt+del for a warm boot, and the array was found w/ no problems in either configuration and booted fine. I finally had enough and bought a RAID card off eBay for about $25, less than half of the cost of the two SATA-IDE's. Talks w/ Asus techsupport had suggested using SIIG SATA-IDE's since they actually tested these on this board (wish I'd known that before I bought the Iwills!). Might eventually by a pair of true SATA drives when prices fall.

Hehe, that's good to know about the Iwills. Before I bought the SATA drives I was using a pair of generic adapters with no problems... could have been Magic Chef for all I know.

And no, you don't have to write zeroes to the drives--they can be full of data, unpartitioned or whatever. Hold down Ctrl-F when prompted during the boot and define the array. All data will be lost, but after you've defined the array and rebooted, you can partition and format just like any other drive.

I couldn't figure out what the deal was w/ those Iwills. Seems that Asus couldn't either. Especially when I opened a case on their HelpDesk and it was finally marked for "Level 2" support but then it was closed about a week later w/ no further response from them!

I just figured that all SATA adapters were the same -- just converted IDE to SATA and vice versa. I considered buying a pair of SIIG's to try but at $20-30 a pop, figured a RAID card would be cheaper this time around.

One other thing: Happen to figure out what this "1394 Net Adapter" is that appears in Device Manager and in Networking under XP? There's no mention of it in the manual and no way (that I can see) to disable it in the BIOS. I figured it was a way to network via the Firewire ports. But as I have no Firewire devices and am using on the onboard Broadcom port for my DSL, I see no use for it.

Got the same on my MSI board... just disable it in the BIOS. It should be under "Integrated Peripherals" or similar. Just look for "1394."

ALUCARD--
I am in the position you WOULD have been had you listened to the advice on purchasing the additional RAID controller. I just built this system MSI k7N2 Delta - ILSR (Which has the same PDC20376 Raid Controller you are working with on your board). In addition to this board I purchased a Promise TX2000 which is ATA133 Raid Controller in hopes of bypassing the software raid route and using an ACTUAL RAID controller which doesn't leech off the CPU. W/where I am, there is no way to disable the onboard RAID and just use the TX2000's devices. In other words, the controller's bios-s conflict and system will not boot if TX2000 detects devices.

Hope this was a little helpful. tHe.iR1sH

Just as an FYI for those looking for a compatible option with this Asus Board in general re: RAID's and SATA vs. IDE --> Asus now makes a Parallel to Serial converter dongle that is compatible with this Promise onboard RAID controller. For ASUS P4PE, A7V8X, P4SDX, and P4S8X Motherboard Series (on SATA model only). I just ordered it from www.newegg.com in combination with two 80gb parallel 7200rpm drives. Will post again once its hooked up and running as to the speed/performance/etc.

One question I have is this: I know that with mirroring, you essentially lose the capacity of one of the drives as it acts as a complete backup of the primary drive, but will that happen with striping? For example, with my new 80gb drives, will I have 80gb of space, or 160?

Thanks.