Abit IP35 ICH9R SATA RAID Question

[ToLive]

I have a Abit IP35 motherboard (with ICH9R SATA RAID supported) and 4 SATA hard drives connected to it, can I enable SATA RAID mode in BIOS, but just configure 2 hard drives as RAID 0 and use the other 2 hard drives as Non-RAID SATA mode?

 

[Heidfirst]

you should be able to.

 

[mjavid]

You should use the two non RAID drives in 'RAID READY' mode which means select RAID in the BIOS even though the HDDs are non RAID in case you need to migrate them to RAID.

 

[pcfancy]

Yes that's how I plan to do.
I'm not sure about other brands that use ICH9R, but the Abit IP35 BIOS just has "All or None" option for SATA RAID setting, if I want to use SATA RAID, I must enable RAID for ALL SATA channels. But in the Intel Matrix Storage setting screen, I can configure a RAID 0 that uses only 2 of the 4 hard drives...
The reason I asked this question was, for those 2 non-RAID hard drives, will they operate in the same way as normal SATA drives? in case I need to take them off and attach to SATA port on a different PC, will the disks still be readable?

Originally posted by: mjavid
You should use the two non RAID drives in 'RAID READY' mode which means select RAID in the BIOS even though the HDDs are non RAID in case you need to migrate them to RAID.

 

[mjavid]

I think they should be. Even in RAID mode, all the SATA AHCI features are enabled on the SATA HDD. I would suggest you read the Intel Matrix Manager manual which you can download on the Intel website to doublecheck.

 

[vailr]

There may be extra steps required, when installing Windows on a single HD, and the IP35-Pro's bios is set to Raid mode.
Such as: installing Windows on a pair of Raided HD's, and a backup Windows installation on a 3rd HD.
May also depend on the specific bios version.