Hey guys (and gals). Im thinking of buying a new mobo, and I was thinking of setting up my 2 ide drives in a raid form. Now, since I don't know much about that subject, I was wondering: all the new mobos I've seen (like the abit, asus and msi deluxe models) all state they offer sata raid. Will I still be able to hook my 2 IDE hd's in raid form, or do they *absolutely* have to be sata? (I heard that in that case, I could use some ide --> sata convertors, but I was also told there is a compromise in performance). Any ideas? Also, if my 2 ide hd's *can* be raid'd, do they have to be identical? Or, can I use my old WD, with a new Maxtor, of different capacity? Thanks! p.s.: Where can I find some more info about raid?

the only possible way to set up ide drives in a raid array is to use pata to sata adapters like you mentioned earlier when using these adapters there is no compromise in performance, in fact there is an increase in performance! "Also, if my 2 ide hd's *can* be raid'd, do they have to be identical? Or, can I use my old WD, with a new Maxtor, of different capacity?" ummm, im not so sure on that subject, but you can check out this thread: http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/28308.html what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

As far as I know, RAID can only be achieved with SATA disks, not with IDE. IF, there are ATA->SATA converters there would be indeed performance loss, because IDE runs on 100 and SATA on 150.

I read the thread you mentioned Giggles, (thanks a lot both of you btw!) and now I have 2 further questions, heh :p How many types of Raid are there? I noticed you mentioned Raid0, so I presume there are more..? (Damn, and there I was thinking it'd be easy) What's their difference, and use? Back to my original query, I know for a fact manufacturers made mobo's with raid when there weren't any sata's available (Abit kt7-raid is one example). Is it the same raid we're talking about? (heh, pardon my absolute lack of knowledge on the raid issue :p ) Does that mean ide hd's can be raid'd without those convertors? Third (and last, I promise!) do the hd's to be raid'd have to be absolutely identical, capacity-wise? So, I can't use a 20Gb Maxtor together with an 80Gb WD? or does that mean I will lose the WD's 60Gb's? Whew, thanks in advance!

There are IDE RAID Controllers but as SATA is now becoming commonplace, IDE RAID Controllers are becoming rarer. As you say soulis, the ABIT KT7-Raid has IDE Raid as I have one as did many other IDE only motherboards. Just a word of caution though. I would steer clear of RAID 0. It is almost impossible to recover from a broken RAID 0 array - something goes wrong and you lose the lot. There is no redundancy as the name suggest. In RAID 0 data is split between two disks which has the effect of speeding things up. One disk fails and the lot goes. In a true RAID system, data is written twice to two different disks, so if one drive fails, the data is available an another. This of course slows things down because the data has to be written twice. There are RAID arrays which overcome this problem by using fours disks. Data is spilt between one pair, and written again to the other pair. Not all Raid Controllers support all RAID variations. Do a search on Google and you will soon find loads of articles on RAID and its many variations. I think there were Ten the last time I looked. Stuart

what i meant was that thewre is no performance loss when using the sata adpters, they actually increase performance and speed of your hdd gotta go to work ahh what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

ok, i dont know if 2WD 7200rpm 8mb cache *sata* hdds in a raid array would have any ,more performance than 2WD 7200rpm 8mb cache *pata* hdds using pata___>sata adapters i bet if you googled it you could find someone who benchmarked them in a test "Third (and last, I promise!) do the hd's to be raid'd have to be absolutely identical, capacity-wise?" as far as tropic and i know, no they do not have to be identicle capacity-wise, you would just loose loose whatever the difference is in their sizes "So, I can't use a 20Gb Maxtor together with an 80Gb WD? or does that mean I will lose the WD's 60Gb's?" yes you will loose the 60gigs i dont think that raid is like dual channel ram, in which the sticks of ram have to be identical i think raid is more forgiving, its just that you would loose performance by using varying models of hdds becuase they wouldnt be exactly in sync with eachother in fact what we're are talking about i hope to try today in raid 0 as im getting another WD hdd but this one will be 120gigs so when i combine it with my 80gig i will loose 40gigs im just waiting for those sata adapters, tropic sent, to get here what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other