GA-880GA-UD3H Raid Question

[Newestbie]

Hi, I have GA-880GA-UD3H with Phenom x6 andWindows7 runing on it.  I have  1Tb SATA system drive  and also one 500Gb PATA,  one 500GbSATA one 250GbSATA  and SATA DVD drive.  I just bought two 2Tb  SATA3Gb/s Hard Drives and I want to configure RAID1 on them while keeping old drives. New HDDs will be Archive dirves and OS will continue to run old 1Tb  drives. Later I have a plan to add a pair for 1Tb SATA drive and configure them as RAID0  as OS runnning drives.

I confused about ports and Bios options. My questions are
1- Should I do raid on GSATA2_6/7 3Gb/s connectors? (since HDDs are only 3Gb/s capable) or add them to SATA3_0/1/2/3/4/5 SB850 controlled ports?
2- Can I add RAID and NonRAID  Drives together to SB850 controlled first 6  SATA3 connectors.
3- If I change bios settings to RAID for SB850 controlled port, can I still use existing OS from samee old boot drive?
4- Is there any performance diffrence If I attach two raid array to same South Bridge SATA connectors or should I attach one raid on south bridge , one raid to SATA2 chip ?

When I complete upgrade  My configuration will be  two 2Tb as RAID1, two 1TB as RAID0 3spare SATA, one PATA Hard drives and one SATA DVD drive. What is the best setup plan would be? all raids under one controller? or divide them between SB850 and GigabyteSATA2?

Thanks

[absic]

Hi there,

Your best scenario is probably to use the SB850 Ports and use the GSATA ports, set to IDE Mode for your DVD/CD Drive(s). The SATA3  ports are backwards compatible so attaching SATA2 or even SATA 1.5 HDD's isn't a major issue.

There shouldn't be an issue with using your existing install alongside a RAID array through the SATA3 ports although you might have to reconfigure your BOOT priority for the BOOT Drive to be seen first. I have to admit to the fact that I am not sure on how having two different RAID Arrays, on the same controller will work out, but I'm sure someone else will come along with an opinion about that.

Not sure I would bother with creating a RAID 0 array for the OS with such large Hard drives and remember, with RAID0 if it goes down, you have no redundancy like you do with other RAID options.