So I finally got around to popping open the case and connecting the correct drives to the appropriate SATA ports.
I'll outline what I did in case someone else is going through a similar setup process.
After connecting the 4 drives I'm using in RAID 5 to ports 0, 1, 2, and 3, I went into the BIOS after boot up by pressing DEL. There, I went into the peripherals tab, and set the "SATA Type" to "RAID", and the "SATA Port4/5" to "IDE". Note that I wanted 4 of my 6 drives in RAID 5, 1 SSD for the OS, and a standalone drive for random stuff, as the RAID 5 is simply going to be for my media. (Unfortunately, it doesn't look as if AHCI is an option on ports 4/5. I can either set it to IDE, or set it to "as SATA Type", which essentially throws it into the same category as whatever you have "SATA Type" set to - in my case, RAID).
I'm on a Windows 7 machine, so that was all I needed to do. Saved and exited, and the computer rebooted.
Was prompted with an initial screen to access the RAID controller setup, but realised I didn't install the RAID drivers.
Downloaded them from the website, extracted them to desktop, opened up device manager and located my RAID controller. This wasn't hard as it had a glaring yellow exclamation mark next to it. Right clicked, clicked update driver, browsed locally to the folder/location where I extracted the drivers, and all was well. Rebooted, and went into the RAID controller setup page.
From there, I followed the steps to create a logical volume (I believe I pressed 2 and followed what was written). Set it to RAID 5, and given that this was going to be for media files, I increased the stripe block to as large as possible (256KB is the max, unfortunately), same with the sector size. Left the read policy to "read ahead", and wasn't able to change the write policy, which defaulted to "write back".
With those settings, I finalised everything, gave the array a name, and rebooted to Windows.
From there, I went to Disk Management and the RAID array was recognised. Went through the steps of adding it/formatting it (GPT as I will be having large files on this partition, although I don't think many people even use MBR anymore?).
Next came the testing using CrystalDiskMark and a trial version of HD Tune Pro. Note that I've tested these individual hard drives initially before setting up the RAID array. All worked well, although one drive did have an "End to End Error Detection" warning [98 98 99 2]. I tested this drive a few times more than the rest, and it seemed fine without any problems. This is SMART afterall, and I am attributing this to an event possibly in the past that's logged. I'll monitor it, and see what happens, as I believe the warranty is expired on that particular drive. This may also mean that I'll have to figure out an optimal backup solution quicker than expected, just in case.
Haven't done much reading in regards to what the benchmark figures
should be, but I will look into them in the next couple of days when I've got more time. From what I could tell with my limited knowledge, the figures look within reason. If anyone has any input, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Something to note, and not sure why this is the case, but HD Tune Pro doesn't allow me to benchmark writing, as it doesn't recognise my RAID array as a drive, but sees it as the default "AMD 3+1 Disk RAID 5" setup/Logical Array? Not sure why this is the case, but alas, no writing benchmarks from HD Tune.
So that is where things stand. I'll post back here with any significant changes/issues, but I don't foresee any. Hopefully.
Thanks again, Shadowsports.
