I'd say leave the RAID "off" (the default on most MoBo's to my knowledge). RAID does exactly what you said - it can make 2 drives act as 1 big drive with increased sustained bandwidth (this is "RAID 0" or a "Striped array"). This is great for getting more bandwidth, but piss poor for reliability (One drive fails, and you loose ALL data!! :( ).

There is also RAID1 - which is a "mirrored array", and has no bandwidth benefits, but allows redundancy of 2 drives with the exact same data. If one drive fails, you have a backup to recover from...

Stick with seperate drives for now (no RAID). That will get you around 50 simultaneous Audio Tracks at 44.1/24 (maybe more).

Just back up your data, and all is well...

:cool:

thanks randyman. and do turn the RAID function off in the bios settings?

Yes - If RAID is "ON" in the BIOS, you will have to defeat it (turn it "off" or "Disabled").

PS - Some MoBo's have a main HD controller (called the "Southbridge controller" - E.G> - ICH5R, ICH7R, etc). Some MoBo's may also have a secondary set of SATA/PATA connections for a secondary set of Hard Drives on a SEPERATE CONTROLLER.

My Asus MoBo has this seperate HD controller called the "Promise Controller" ("Promise" is the brand name IIRC), and it requires special drivers for RAID operation, and special drivers for regular "Non-RAID" operation (or no drivers if you leave the Promise Controller "Disabled" in the BIOS).

If you have these extra HD ports, and want to use them, you have to install the specific drivers. Do you have these extra ports, and want to use them? (What model is your MoBo?). Man, I'm unconcise, aren't I? :lol:

:cool:

thank you once again randy. yes, i do have two separate SATA plug in locations. i have two in the middle of the mobo, and two at the bottom (which are probably what you referred to as the southbridge connection). right now, for some reason my computer will not let me get into bios. haha, if its not one thing, its another. i try to enter setup and my monitor says "HV freqeuncy over range" and goes black. i tried a different monitor and it just went black, without the message. so im working on that. im trying to update some of the drivers and see if i cant get it working again. flashing it with the onboard jumper didnt do anything.

but that was a tangent. my motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra. It uses the Nvidia nforce3 chipset.

let me know what you think. thank you.

DJ, You shouldn't even attempt to run a RAID array with those drives. If in the future you decide to utilize RAID you'll want to get another drive of the same size or better yet an identical drive to what you have in order to set it up.

Why your controller is even allowing this is beyond me (server class controllers won't allow it unless the drives size matches). Never install a RAID array on drives of different sizes. Doing so would be a great way to loose all of your data.

Here's a link to the basics of RAID if your interested.

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

Randy, what's up? 8-)

The BIOS thing is weird! From what I have seen, the BIOS has a very low-res video output. Can you still boot into Windows normally? Maybe Don (Hey Big_D :) ) or Guy will have some input here? I have had the opposite issue (I could get into BIOS just fine, but my "backup" monitor was so crappy, Windows XP would not even work on it at 640x480!!!)

For the HD ports, the Southbridge (primary port) is pretty much the way to go for your OS drive and primary Audio drive. This bypasses the PCI bus, where as the secondary controller usually ties up PCI bandwidth (not good for massive Audio I/O and lots of HD activity along with Video and USB all at once on the PCI bus :eek: ).

This secondary bus is, however, FANTASTIC for back-up purposes. I have a large 300Gig SATA HD on my "Promise Controller", and copying files from the Southbridge HD's to the Promise Controller HD is way faster than copying from Southbridge HD to Southbridge HD. Any "Working data" is written to/read from the Southbridge HD's as I work on my projects, and then copied over to my backup drive once I'm done for the day. Fast as hell, and a very quick back-up routine IMO! :eek:

:cool:

i didnt intend to use the raid feature. in the bios, the RAID configuration is the default. i wanted to make sure that i wasnt supposed to use it by posting in forums, and then going back to change it. as of now, there is no data on the two sata drives, and theyre not set up yet. they arent even configured to show up in "my computer" yet. but now that i want to go back in to bios and change it, it wont let me! bios wont load!

When did your BIOS issues start? Try unhooking the 2 newly added drives, and see if you can get back into your BIOS. Maybe the 2 different size drives is freaking out the initialization of the secondary controller? (Like Don "The Man" said)

I looked at your MoBo specs, and 2 of the SATA ports are Southbridge, and 2 are on a Sil3512 (like my Promise Controller IIRC). I'd recommend keeping your AUDIO drive on the Southbridge with the OS drive.

Then, you can MAYBE use the Sil3512 in "IDE/ATA" mode, and use your extra SATA HD on this controller for backups, and misc useage. You may have to go into your BIOS and select the Sil3512 to operate as "IDE/ATA" instead of "RAID" mode... My Promise Controller allows IDE/ATA mode via BIOS and special drivers, but I'm not familiar with the Sil3512 controller (sorry).

:cool:

thanks randy, ill look more into that configuration that you recommended. it definitely makes sense.

as far as the bios, still no luck. it just barely started, probably less than half an hour ago. windows boots just fine, im even on it right now. the bios just wont load! its so frustrating. if anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated.

Try un-hooking those 2 new drives, and then try to get into the BIOS (just leave your OS drive hooked up). To BIOS, or not to BIOS? That is the question :lol:

You could always try re-flashing the EPROM as a last effort (There may be BIOS updates avalible for your MoBo anyway!).

:cool:

What video card are you running?

What monitors are you running?

Did you make any changes to the BIOS, specifically the video?

flashing it with the onboard jumper didnt do anything.

Do you mean the jumper to reset BIOS defaults?

It sounds to me like the BIOS is using video card modes on bootup instead of the BIOS default.

AH! IT WORKS! thank you to everyone for all of your help. it finally let me back into bios when i disconnected the two SATA drives, and i was able to change the raid settings from there and hook them back up. theyre being formatted and getting ready to go. im excited to start pumping out some audio on my new machine! thanks again everyone.

Killer! Keep us posted on your progress.

:cool:

Nice save Randy, 8-)