esata and Raid 5 setup

[Golferdude1977]

I currently have two non-raid system internal sata drives along with 3-sata drives in a Raid 5 setup. I am wanting to connect a esata drive to keep my backup's on. I have a sata port on my mobo, gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R rev 1. When I connect it and power it up, should it be with the computer starting up or can/should it be started like a hot swappable drive. If I start it up with the computer, will the Raid system try and put it into the mix? I haven't been able to find how to intermingle esata's and raid 5 system drives once the system is set up. Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[pjkenned]

On the should you connect it at bootup, that doesn't matter so long as you don't want to raid 5 it. If you do raid 5 the esata drive, then it needs to be on at all times alongside the other drives in the PC. If you just use it as a spare drive for backups, plug it in, make a back up, unplug the drive and store it in a safe location.

As for integrating esata and Raid 5, it depends on the board. A lot have a different controller for the esata. So while the ICHXR may run the internal ports and their raid 5, a JMicron controller may run the back panel esata port. If this is the case, then it probably won't work to add an esata drive to an internal raid 5 array. If the esata + internal headers all run off of the ICHXR then you are probably OK. On the other hand, some boards use cables to connect the esata ports to the internal headers. If this is the case, you can use an external drive connected to the ICHXR internal header and do raid 5. My advice, read the manual.

 

[Golferdude1977]

Thanks for the info. I did read the manual but it was very vague on this issue.

I am not wanting to include it in the raid 5 drives, just as a stand alone drive I use to back up files, sort of like using a flash drive. It sounds like I just boot the machine, then turn the drive on and it will be a stand alone drive, perform the back up, turn it off, unplug . With esata drives, do you have to "safely remove hardware" or just finish the backup, then turn it off?

 

[Binky]

You can just turn it off when you're done, but you must disable the write cache on that drive.

 

[Golferdude1977]

I am not sure how you turn the cache off on the drive. What's is the purpose of doing that? I will read the manual on the drive see if it is a pin setting. But I am curious on what happens if I don't turn the cache writing off.

Thanks....