I'm thinking of getting a tekram Areca arc-1230, as well as a 1GB non-ecc sodimm (it lists compatibility with and without ECC), plugging it into 8 WD 3200KS's (16MB cache), and into the 2nd pci-express slot on my asus A8N SLi Premium. The bios is 1011 beta 006 on the board, and it will be get a full 8 pci-e lanes for the card.
The reason I ask is this:
I tried installing a raid array on my promise supertrak. It sucked, no matter what promise says. My raid5 was terrible to boot from, and if I had the array installed then I couldn't boot off of a standalone disk... even if that disk was in the same raid card. so I decided to sell it on ebay and got a refreshingly large amount for it.
Then as a stopgap I decided to check out the integrated sillicon image raid5 controller. Installed the drivers, activated it in the bios, set up the settings for my raid5 array, hit "yes", and it froze. So I figured I'd boot off of a standalone drive and use the array as storage. NOPE. Won't boot off of it, it looks at the array and then stops looking.
My plan is to set up all 8 drives into raid6, have a 100GB partition for boot and games, and then the other 1820GB for storage. Will this work? I don't want to spend $730 for huge headache.
Also, I have a quick side-question:
Asus lists the latest version of my bios to be 1011 006. The bioses for the asus a8n sli deluxe (not premium) go all the way up to 1017. Do they support this board more, or does the premium bios not have to be updated as much?
The reason I ask is this:
I tried installing a raid array on my promise supertrak. It sucked, no matter what promise says. My raid5 was terrible to boot from, and if I had the array installed then I couldn't boot off of a standalone disk... even if that disk was in the same raid card. so I decided to sell it on ebay and got a refreshingly large amount for it.
Then as a stopgap I decided to check out the integrated sillicon image raid5 controller. Installed the drivers, activated it in the bios, set up the settings for my raid5 array, hit "yes", and it froze. So I figured I'd boot off of a standalone drive and use the array as storage. NOPE. Won't boot off of it, it looks at the array and then stops looking.
My plan is to set up all 8 drives into raid6, have a 100GB partition for boot and games, and then the other 1820GB for storage. Will this work? I don't want to spend $730 for huge headache.
Also, I have a quick side-question:
Asus lists the latest version of my bios to be 1011 006. The bioses for the asus a8n sli deluxe (not premium) go all the way up to 1017. Do they support this board more, or does the premium bios not have to be updated as much?
