"RAID 0/1/0+1" vs "NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD"

[homestarmy]

I am looking at motherboards on Newegg, and some are listed one way while some are listed the other way. Is there a difference, or just a different way of listing?

I am assuming the first of the two is hardware with a chip on the motherboard and the second is basically software, is that correct?

 

[homestarmy]

???

 

[tomt4535]

What boards specificly are you looking at? Im pretty sure they are both the same thing. Nvidia has integrated a RAID controller on their Chipsets. They call it NV RAID, but its the same thing as plain old RAID.

 

[jiffylube1024]

All NF4 boards using the onboard Nforce4 SATA2 4-port controller support the same RAID options: RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 (sometimes called 01). So they're just listing the same thing in different ways.

They're all hardware RAID functions. They should all support RAID5 also, which is primarily a software solution on NF4/Intel ICH7/ULI 1575/etc.

 

[imported_kenyee]

To clarify: it's pseudoraid (google FakeRAID to find out more)
Real hardware RAID doesn't need you to install any drivers in your OS...

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: kenyee
To clarify: it's pseudoraid (google FakeRAID to find out more)
Real hardware RAID doesn't need you to install any drivers in your OS...

Pretty sure you need a driver for the controller regardless....

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: kenyee
To clarify: it's pseudoraid (google FakeRAID to find out more)
Real hardware RAID doesn't need you to install any drivers in your OS...

Yeah I'm pretty sure hardware RAID needs drivers for the controller card.

 

[imported_kenyee]

The driver is to let the hardware RAID flag errors to the operating system and let the OS control the card, but isn't required for booting. The operating system just sees the RAID drives as a single big drive once you use the BIOS to configure the RAID set.
If you delete the nvraid driver from Windows after you configure it, Windows will no longer boot

 

[yehuda]

kenyee:

Nice of you to bring up this subject. I was under the impression that nForce4 has a dedicated hardware RAID controller which collects RAID-enabled drives and presents them to the OS as a single drive in a transparent manner.

Now it seems less tempting. Having read the RAID article on Wikipedia, I realize that this chip falls in the category of "Hyprid RAIDs" (or FakeRAIDs) which aren't as efficient -- and nowhere as independent -- as one could be fooled to believe.

 

[dBTelos]

Not sure on the NV (nVidia) prefix but one appears to have support for JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks - Pretty much used for putting 2 or more drives toghether without stripping or mirroring one or the other)

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: dBTelos
Not sure on the NV (nVidia) prefix but one appears to have support for JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks - Pretty much used for putting 2 or more drives toghether without stripping or mirroring one or the other)

Oh yeah, is that what JBOD is? If that's the case, then it's another name for what is known as "spanning."

 

[imported_kenyee]

AFAIK, none of the workstation boards w/ "built-in" RAID have true hardware RAID...only server level boards do and even then, not all of them (lots of them even have fakeRAID SCSI suppport). A real hardware RAID solution needs its own processor and memory, etc, so it'll run an extra $200-300 by itself, w/ the good stuff running around $400-600...