X.H.D. what is, what does?

[Nano Gurth]

hi, new costumer of gigabyte with a very nice p55a - usb3 motherboard here .

i searched all the web, and this forum also, but i can't find a good explanation of what XHD is.

1)is it just a tool to make a RAID 0 without touching bios settings?

2)from the marketing webpages and Mb manual, it seems i can activate it and add a new (second) disk whenever i want, but then..it's something different from "classic" RAID , because classic RAID can't be done in that way.

i'm in a weird situation, buyed all the stuff for a new pc, 2hdd to make a raid, but one of them is broken so i need to wait the RMA..but i'd need to make my pc up and running the soonest possible.
so if this XHD does what it claims (adding a second hdd in a later moment..and then making a raid thanks to XHD, without having to reformat the disks), i'm good to go.

please some clarification , thanks in advance.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

XHD stands for eXtreme Hard  Drive and is fairly much as you supposed except that it is only for RAID0 arrays and the array must be up and running first. It then lets you add another disk/s to it to increase the capacity of the array.

On a slightly different slant if you are thinking of using Western Digital Black SATA3  6Gbs hard drives connected to the Marvell 9128 SATA3 controller dont bother, as it won't work. The Marvell chip will just not take the data thropughput and fall over taking your RAID with it.

[Nano Gurth]

thanks for the quick answer Dark.

so, if i understand well (just to recap), XHD is NOT usable to "create" raid 0 , but only to upgrade it if i want to add disks.

p.s. : no problem with caviar blacks, i will use 2 WD blues with p55 integrated controller 

[Dark Mantis]

You can use the caviar blacks but dont expect them to live up to the hype of 6Gbs even on the SATA3 controller. The trouble with hte WDs is that they have hobbled the ordinary desktop drives and they wont run TLER and so are not good for RAID. You need to buy the Enterprise version for that (same drive just not hobbled and more expensive).

Rather than me going through all the XHD info I have include a link to the manual for you to see yourself.

http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_xhd_e.pdf

[Nano Gurth]

With GIGABYTE eXtreme Hard Drive (X.H.D)(Note 1), users can quickly configure a RAID-ready system for RAID 0 when a new SATA drive is added. For a RAID 0 array that already exists, users also can use X.H.D to easily add a hard drive into the array to expand its capacity.

well..first line says quite clearly that XHD can set up a RAID 0 when you add a new sata drive : ie i can build my pc with ONE SATA AND NO RAID, install windows, and when i'll have a second disk,by running XHD software  i will make a RAID 0 (2disks total), without having to format.

if not, i feel ther's a contraddiction somewhere in the manual.

i'm getting confused 

[Dark Mantis]

I agree it is abit open to interpretation. I read it a couple of times before deciding that it was saying it was used for adding an extra drive to a RAID0 array. Yes I would agree that you can use it for the setup in the beginning but I read that to mean two drives

[Nano Gurth]

thanks anyway for your time Dark.

i guess i'll just try..when my second hd will come back from RMA i'll discover myself if i have to format->make classic RAID 0, or just run XHD and bam, all done.

it would be sure nice   

[Dark Mantis]

That is where it is always hard to know exactly if you don't actually use something. Please let us know how you get on with it and then maybe we can all learn something.

[Kludge420]

I'm not sure how you guys are reading it so wrong but it clearly says you turn it on when you have a single drive so you can add another drive later to make a RAID 0.

From the user's manual: "...users can quickly configure a RAID- ready system for RAID 0 when a new SATA drive is added. For a RAID 0 array that already exists, users also can use X.H.D to easily add a hard drive into the array to expand its capacity." [emphasis mine]

It's clearly not just for existing RAID setups.