K8N-E Deluxe RAID Configuration question.

[yak merchant]

Okay,

Have a K8N-E deluxe with a 3000+ and I'm building a database server. I'm trying to configure it for best performance, while having redundancy for the data (not necessarily the OS). I have 2 250GB Western Digital 7200 RPM Sata drives. And 1 80GB Maxtor 7200 rpm Sata drive. I'm looking to use RAID 1 on the 250's and use that as my data storage. And the 80 GB for the operating system. I do realize that not having the OS on the mirror does present a problem if that drive blows, but I'm not really sensitive to a little downtime, so as long as I can rebuild and not lose my data I'll live with it. A work associate says I should by another drive to seperate the page file from the OS for performance, and would also have a backup bootable OS on that drive. That way if the OS drive fails. I can just boot to the 4th drive. If the 4th drive fails, I can just repoint the Page file and be fine. Either way I guess my question is, which controller should I use? Should I but the RAID 1 on the onboard NVDIA controller or the SATA Link controller? Any reason I should have the OS on the mirrored partition? Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

[yak merchant]

Bueller? Anyone?

 

[sillymofo]

Doesn't that board have four SATA connectors? Just stick in the smaller drive and install your OS first, then after build the RAID1 for your storage. Or, you can just stick them all on the mobo and do it that way.

 

[WW2Planes1]

I've got the board... and for others who read this, it only uses 2 NVidia SATA connectors (rather than implementing all four) and 4 with the SIL 3114 chipset.

I haven't tried installing an OS to a drive on the SIL controller, but I think it'd be easier to put your OS drive on the NVidia controller, which would mean you'd have to go with the SIL for your mirrored drives. You'll be limited by the PCI-bus bandwidth, but since your network ISN'T on that, I wouldn't think that'd be much a problem ( man, i love the NF3 250GB)