Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 multiple RAID mirrors?

Hi all,

I'm looking at getting this board and using the RAID. Does anyone know if the following setup is possible?

I'd like to have three drives, one for the OS and two seperate drives for storage, however i'd also like these all mirrored.

i.e.

OS Drive - Mirror OS Dirve

Storage Drive #1 - Mirror #1 Drive

Storage Drive #2 - Mirror #2 Drive

TIA,

Jim, a newbie

hmm never done it, never felt the need, but not 100% sure but i think your gonna need a mirror drive for every other drive as you want them to be all separate drives.

would have thought youd been better off runing raid 5 or something (running all drives together asone drive and having 1 mirror

Hi SwaleSmith,

Yeah, I realise that this will use 6 drives (3 'in-use' & 3 mirrors). I don't want to stripe any drives (in any config, RAID 0 or 5) because i've just had my Snap Server 4000 die on me (board malfunction) with 3 drives in a RAID 5 config. It is going to be a real PIA to recover the data and I don't want to face this situation again.

I don't know an awful lot about RAID and how it varies from controller to controller and would just like to know if it's possible to have 3 seperate mirrors using the controller(s) on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5.

Cheers,

Jim

Hmmm I think you'd actually have to contact GigaByte about this one :/ Personally I'm guessing it's possible but I do not have any real reason for thinking that.

Wish I could test it for you... But I don't have that many drives ^^

Hey monkey7,

I like to think that it's possible, and would preferably like to know before I buy everything. Do you / does anyone know if it's possible to mirror 2 drives separately (uses 4 drives):

i.e.

OS Drive - Mirror OS Drive

Storage Drive - Mirror Storage drive

on one controller? If so it may be possible to mirror 3 drives.

Jim

Storage Interface South Bridge:

1. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices

2. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

Click to expand...

I know it says "support". Having 2x IDE ports could mean ur mobo would have "support" for raid also - even if it were software based.

I would have thought tho that if u can setup raid 0, 3 times on most modern mobos since... I can't remember.. then mirroring shouldn`t be an issue.

Still best to check.

I have contacted Gigabyte's Tech Support. Hopefully they'll let me know.

Thanks for the posts so far

Thought you'd like to know Gigabytes response:

Answer : Hi,

Should be no problems with onboard controllers we suggest referring to the various online RAID forums.

Regards,

GGTS

Question - 700086

From : Jim

Sent : 1/6/2009 21:10

Question : Hi,

I am looking to purchase this board, but please can you clarify something first? I would like to build a system with three hard drives, 1 for the OS and two seperate drives for storage. However, I would like to mirror these drives separately. Is it possible, using the onboard controllers to have a drive for the OS that is mirrored alongside storage drive #1 that is mirrored, alongside storage drive #2 that is mirrored?

The reason I ask is because I have just had the mainboard of a Snap Server 4000 NAS fail on me and i'm not looking forward to trying to recover three drives that were RAID5; I certinly do not want to face this again.

Thank you very much in advance for any help you can offer.

Jim

Model #: GA-EX58-UD5

Great. Just great. Did he even read the remaining part of the question after having found out that the email was about RAID? I'd send them quite an angry mail this time tbh :X

I'm going to send another message. Considering I had to wait 2 days for an e-mail response, I was looking for a bit more detail!

Is this the kind of after sales support Gigabyte provide? Makes me wonder...

A more sensible response from Gigabyte! (not what I wanted though...)

Answer - 701326

Answer : Hello,

Ok, there are only two RAID controllers on motherboard, Southbridge and Gigabyte SATA 2 chip. Therefore only 2 separate RAID mirrors will be supported unless you were to install a PCI RAID card.

Regards,

GGTS

Question - 701326

From : Jim

Sent : 1/9/2009 00:23

Question : Hi,

With respect to my previous question: 700086

Please can you clarify your response as I am having trouble relating it to to my original question.

I know the motherboard can support 6 SATA drives, as I can read the specs. I also have an idea how RAID works. What I'm asking you is; can the specific RAID controller on the GA-EX58-UD5(rev. 1.0) motherboard support 3 seperate simultaneous RAID mirrors?

Thanks,

Jim

so you want 6 drives in 3 pairs of raid0 ?

i know it's possible to run 2 raids on the intel controller...

heck it's even possible to run 2 diff raid configs on just 2 drives thanks to intel matrix

if i hadn't just gotten rid of a load of hard drives, i would have tried the config for you

Yep, 6 drives in 3 RAID mirror pairs.

I know the setup needs a few drives! I'll it when I get all the parts for the HTPC and post back, It'll be a week or two...

oops, just realised i put raid0 instead of raid1

well i hope it all works for you, good luck m8