Hey guys, i am wanting to know a lot more about SATA drives, i'm going to be upgrading my ATA100 drive soon so i can speed my computer up abit and free the IDE channel.

I know that SATA operates at a maximum speed of 150mb/s and you can have two SATA drives set up as one as in SATA RAID i think its called. But i want to know if when i put a new drive in and set it up like i would of a normal ATA drive, will it be the same? As in when i install it and the BIOS detects it and i can setup XP Pro normally from the disc or do i need to install drivers?

I have the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe m/b with the Silicon image SATA controller if that is a needed piece of info.

If you could give me some links to sites that explain all this in detail that would be great.

Cheers, Daniel

Yes, I have set up a few machines exactly like you described. It is set up and runs just like an ATA drive and needs no drivers running solo.

Asus boards however are a bit flakey with the SATA support so I would be checking the ASUS support site before making a purchase.

Jimi_l
link

Hi Daniel,

I have the exact same board as you do and am running 2 SATA drives in a RAID 0 array. It isn't that difficult to set up.

It is important that you load the drivers when prompted during install. The drivers for SATA and RAID are both located on the ASUS CD.

The notice a tremendous performance boost with this arrangement. Windows boots up in seconds, accessing programs not stored in memory is quicker too. However, i am running 2 western digital raptors and they are the elite SATA drives right now.

Tony

You dont need drivers if it is running solo, only for a RAID array.

Jimi_l

Great, that is what i wanted to know. If you needed drivers for running one drive solo. So if i were to buy two and set them up as a RAID 0 configuration, how much of a performance boost will i see? Also i hear that if you have them in RAID 0 they both die in a few years and then both drives are buggered at the same time. Is this true?

Cheers, Daniel