GA-EX58-UD4P Raid Setup

[Narayana]

Hello-

I recently purchased 2 Intel 80GB SSD and 4 7200RPM 2.5"HD.  I intended to use the SSDs as boot drives for both OS X and Win7 and RAID5 the 4 platter drives to create a 750GB FAT32 drive to split between both OS.

I plan to set the Intel Chipset that controls the 6 SATA ports to RAID and the GSATA controller to AHCI (I assume the first listing  in the bios is for the 6 sata ports and the second for the 2 gsata ports).  I would then like to boot the SSDs (in their respective OS) on GSATA.  Will that be possible?

My question, concisely, is can I boot off the GSATA ports?  Will their be a performance penalty in non-RAID configurations for the drives connected to GSATA?

I couldn't see a search option, so excuse me if the question has been asked.

Thanks!

[UD6]

You can boot from the GSATA ports. Should not be a problem. Just define the boot order in the BIOS.

In respect of performance penalty. You have to find out for yourself. Almost every BIOS and driver might give you a new experience. I am tired of testing afterwards just to find new problems. But this is the only way to go.

[Narayana]

Thanks for the reply, UD6.

In regards to the correct settings in the BIOS, was I correct in assuming that the first listing where you can select IDE/RAID/AHCI is for the 6 main sata ports and the second listing for the GSATA?

[UD6]

The first one is for Intel RAID. But you can mix there RAID und AHCI disks - no problem. Some DVD-RW have a problem when you plug them into AHCI. So mine is on GSATA and IDE.

I use Intel RAID since it is simply faster on my computer. But had old driver before with 2 RAID 0  disks and speed 250 then new BIOS speed 170 then new driver and speed 250 again. So really check for your system and here with the C state settings for the CPU in the BIOS you will use. There were BIOS/driver where this could make a big difference.

[Narayana]

UD6, what exactly do you mean by mixing AHCI and RAID5 array?  Running of the gsata ports I seem to read at ~160MB/s which is about 100MB/s off.  I also seem trouble booting to both the Windows and Mac drives.

I should receive the 4 2.5" sata drives today...is it possible to run a raid 5 on sata 0-3 and ahci for sata 4 and 5?

Is there anything I need to set up in the BIOS to enable this?

[Narayana]

I tried to setup the four 7200RPM drives in a RAID 5 configuration, but OS X will not boot unless AHCI is enabled.  Running Windows 7 and OS X off the gsata ports gives me odd behavior and it has difficulty starting up.  In addition to this, the read times are dramatically slower (-100MB/s).

Is there anyway I can have  RAID 5 array for sata0-3 and run AHCI on sata 4 and 5 for my Mac/Windows drives?

Thanks...