If a mb has raid do you need to use it? ep 8k5a2+?

[Busie23]

I just bought this board but did't think about the raid. Is this something I can turn off if I don't need it on this board? Also, must I use the same size hd's if I want to run raid?

Thanks,

Sean

 

[LED]

Yes you can switch it off in the BIOS and technically you do not need same size HD's but it is recommended... you will only gain double size of the smaller HD when RAIDING them in O or in Mirror form you will only utilize the smaller drive size

 

[Zepper]

You don't have to use the raid and can probably disable it in the BIOS setup, but you might want to reconsider. Say you have 3 drives (HD, CD or DVD-ROM, and CDRW). And say you want to record to CDRW from HD and CDROM. You will get best recording performace if the source drive is on a separate IDE channel from the burner. How do you accomodate this with only two IDE channels? Well, most of the RAID chips will also operate as standard IDE channels for hard disks only - cogitate on it.
Another thought: the raid chips also usually supply higher HD perfomance than that integrated in the chipset.
.bh.
:Q

 

[teqwiz]

You should use the exact same size and make and model for optimial performance. They need to use the same controller at the very least. If you use one controller that is compatible but slower, then it will be only as fast as the slower one in most cases. If the system does use the faster of the two, then it will get very hot and wear faster. Since the controller is almost always integrated with the HD (at least the hardware end of it) and the other half, built in to the MB, then it stands to reason that performance is degraded for too many reasons to list here. Raid was designed for fault tolerance, Raid 1 Mirroring , or speed Raid 0 Striping. Both are good reasons to actually use it.