How does RAID work on the Asus P4P800 Deluxe (or what is JBOD?)

[bawaji]

I have a question about the VIA VT 6410 RAID controller on the Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard.

The manual lists that the VIA RAID controller can be configured as RAID 0 / RAID 1 / RAID 0+1 / JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks?).

Can I connect 2/3/4 hard drives to the IDE RAID connectors so that they are seen as 2/3/4 (respectively) different hard drives by Windows 2000/XP, i.e. without any spanning of the drives to make them appear as one large hard drive? I am using a Promise Ultra 100 IDE controller PCI card in my current Pentium II system and I would like to know if the VIA RAID connectors would duplicate the Promise controller's behavior, in addition to the RAID functionality.

I know I will need more than 4 IDE ports since I have 3 IDE removable devices and 3+ IDE hard drives which I would like to put in the new system. I would like to avoid the option of buying a large IDE hard drive right now to replace the smaller drives that I currently own and would like to move them all to the new system. I assume that moving the Promise Ultra 100 card to the ASUS board will slow down the IDE performance since they are connected to the PCI bus? Please let me know if that is not true since then, I can go for the non-deluxe version of the board.

I hope this ASUS board does what I need and that I don't have to look for another board.

Thanks!

 

[Revolutionary]

Can't tell ya how to work RAID on that board, but I do know the rest of the answer to your question. JBOD is "Just a Bunch Of Disks," and refers to standard arrays of multiple drives (ie, 6 drives that are registered as 6 logical drives, instead of 6 drives that are registered as 1, 2, or 3 logical drives as in a RAID array).

 

[bawaji]

Great! Which means I can move my 3 hard drives to the RAID connectors on the board and they will show up as three different hard drives with its own drive letter. I just wanted to make sure all the data will show up as it is on each hard drive without having to reformat and set up one huge spanned drive.

Thanks!

 

[SWScorch]

dont be so sure about that. I am looking for an answer to the same question, and a Google search for JBOD says that this "spans several independent drives into one larger physical drive." So apparently, if you connect three hdds to the RAID connectors and do not specify RAID, they are seen by the BIOS and OS as one bigger hard drive, the size of the sum of the individual drives.

I sure do hope what we want is possible though. That makes me wonder... If JBOD is the opposite of partitioning, can you span the drives, and then FDISK to partition them into their respective sizes again?

 

[bawaji]

I ordered the board and expect it to come in next week. I hope the JBOD lets me recognize the drives as individual drives without partitioning. If not, I will have to install my Promise IDE card. I will update this thread once I install the system, hopefully without any problem!

 

[SWScorch]

cool... keep us updated!

 

[Revolutionary]

Originally posted by: SWScorch
dont be so sure about that. I am looking for an answer to the same question, and a Google search for JBOD says that this "spans several independent drives into one larger physical drive." So apparently, if you connect three hdds to the RAID connectors and do not specify RAID, they are seen by the BIOS and OS as one bigger hard drive, the size of the sum of the individual drives.

I sure do hope what we want is possible though. That makes me wonder... If JBOD is the opposite of partitioning, can you span the drives, and then FDISK to partition them into their respective sizes again?

My bad! Its seems I was wrong about that! Who knew. Really, I am sorry and I hope my bad information didn't push you over the edge with this board.

As an option, you might try getting 2 Parallel to Serial ATA converters and using 2 of your drives off the SATA connectors, rather than the IDE RAID connectors. Then you could put 3 drives in the system with room for your peripherals. This way you actually gain speed, rather than sacrifice it, get all three independent drives, and spend about as much money for the converters as you would on the Promise card. Just a thought. I use an PATA-to-SATA converter on my Maxtor drive and it flies!

 

[SWScorch]

Quite understandable; I was under the same impression until I really started delving into this problem and discovered the true meaning. storagereview.com has some very in-depth and educational articles on this. I emailed Asus themselved asking for a hard response to whether or not this is possible; knowing how quickly they respond to customers, I'd reckon I'd have an answer in a month or two.

The adapters idea is good, but aren't SATA adapters like $25 each? .... Or do some boards actually ship with them?

 

[bawaji]

Originally posted by: Revolutionary

My bad! Its seems I was wrong about that! Who knew. Really, I am sorry and I hope my bad information didn't push you over the edge with this board.

As an option, you might try getting 2 Parallel to Serial ATA converters and using 2 of your drives off the SATA connectors, rather than the IDE RAID connectors. Then you could put 3 drives in the system with room for your peripherals. This way you actually gain speed, rather than sacrifice it, get all three independent drives, and spend about as much money for the converters as you would on the Promise card. Just a thought. I use an PATA-to-SATA converter on my Maxtor drive and it flies!

I suspected that would be the case with the JBOD. However, I could not find any other board which had the extra controller supporting 4 IDE devices. Maybe the Soyo does but I was planning to choose between Abit and Asus motherboards based on their stability and some overclocking for the future. I decided to go with the Asus P4P800 deluxe over the Abit IS7-G.

If the extra connector doesn't work out, I will end up connecting one CD drive and 3 HD to the on-board IDE and the remaining CDs and HD to the Promise controller. I think the Promise controller supports ATAPI drives in windows, if I remember right. If not, the HDs will go on the Promise controller. I will look into buying the PATA-SATA convertors if they become cheaper in the future or maybe go in for one huge SATA drive when it gets cheap! I already have the Promise ATA 100 controller.

Hope the P4P800 deluxe was a better choice than the Abit IS7-G! I have ordered the 2.8GHz (800MHz FSB) P4 chip and the Kingston HyperX PC3500 RAM. Hope it will make a stable and fast system! If any of you have compared both motherboards and think I made a wrong choice, do let me know!

 

[SWScorch]

Any updates?

 

[bawaji]

The VIA controller works the way I hoped it would. Each drive connected to it shows up as a separate drive. Hence, I can connect all my ATAPI devices to the primary and secondary on-board IDE controllers and the Hardrives to the primary and secondary VIA controllers.

Interesting note: While benchmarking the drives using PCMARK 2002, the ATA133 hard drive consistently received higher scores when connected to the VIA controller than to the regular IDE controllers. I was hoping for this since the VIA controller is rated at ATA133 whereas the standard IDE controllers are rated at ATA100.

All's well that ends well!

 

[Fallengod]

I just ordered this P4P800 board as well, should be here next week. Also, I got the same exact processor as you bawaji. I was also thinking of getting that same ram, what kind of timings are you running right now with that, just curious what I can get it at.

 

[AlanShearer]

The VIA controller is a rebaged Promise one - Via Bought Promise

Intel have only brought drivers for the ICH5R Southbridge when running in RAID mode, which may affect the results.

 

[Fallengod]

Did they really? I didnt know that.

 

[bawaji]

Originally posted by: modempower
I just ordered this P4P800 board as well, should be here next week. Also, I got the same exact processor as you bawaji. I was also thinking of getting that same ram, what kind of timings are you running right now with that, just curious what I can get it at.

I have not overclocked the board. I am running with Perf Mode to Turbo, Memory timings are by SPD, the MAM is Disabled. I get timings of 2-2-2-5 according to CPU-z. CPU-z also reports Performance Mode as "Enabled" in the memory tab.