Anyone here used the onboard RAID on nforce 4 boards?

[SixIron]

I own a Asus A8N-E (Jon, I think I've read somewhere you have one of these and possibly a A8N-SLI). Tomorrow I'll have 4 WD 250 gig SATA II drives and want to build a RAID 0+1 setup. Does anyone have any first hand experience with nforce 4 raid to share? The nvidia storage drivers are the scary part, I've been using the native MS storage drivers so far in the year that I've owned this board. It's easy to find plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting anything you want to believe on other forums but separating the wheat from the chaff isn't always easy.

BTW, Jon, we haven't been formally introduced here but I'm the mostly bald old fart you worked with a few years ago at that web vendor place. Think Will Call if your memory needs any help.

[CAD4466HK]

I'm using it on my Diamond with 2x WD SE 80's in RAID 0, haven't tried
0+1 on it, 4 ports I don't use, what a waste:p
Oh yeah, no problems

EDIT:The drivers are the easy part.
F6 before you do a clean install, I have to use 2 different floppys because stupid MSI decided to go with 2 different controllers

[SixIron]

Clean install my ass, lol. I'm gonna try to migrate my existing XP Pro install with Ghost, spare hard drive, back up of XP activation files etc.

[CAD4466HK]

:p ;)

[jonnyGURU]

Using it w/ 2 drives RAID-0 on an A8NSLI-Deluxe right now. Just did a pair on an eVGA 680i yesterday. Both XP. This one dual boots w/ 2k.

Not sure what to tell you. Seems to work just fine. :D

[SixIron]

Thanks for the replies guys. People using it with no probs was exactly what I wanted to hear. I've had great experiences with Intels onboard RAID, lousy experience with Highpoint (yuck). This will be my first time to use nvidia RAID.

I'll give it a whirl this weekend.

[jonnyGURU]

Oh.. I've gotten over Highpoint a long time ago. Get your mind out of the Abit gutter. ;) For years I was using on board Promise and VIA RAID controllers w/o issue. Actually used VIA RAID 1 on a bunch of voicemail server builds.

Over all, I have to say I like the VIA RAID the best because the software in Windows is the easiest to use. When you have a mirror RAID, it's so easy to swap out drives and rebuild in Windows which is great for a small server because you don't have to rebuild at the BIOS level, all your services are still running, etc.

But so far so good with the nVidia RAID. The only thing I noticed about it that I don't like is that WD Diag doesn't see the individual drives on the controller.

[Dainas]

What driver set are you using? I have a AN8-SLI also. Was going to use RAID but was thrown off by the nForce4 sata drivers(shot my boot times up 40 seconds).

Instead put the extra WB 250gb into my old mac(which also already had a WD 250GB and a sata raid controller, was interested in seeing if such an old machine could benefit from it) for the time being.

[SixIron]

Oh.. I've gotten over Highpoint a long time ago. Get your mind out of the Abit gutter. ;) For years I was using on board Promise and VIA RAID controllers w/o issue. Actually used VIA RAID 1 on a bunch of voicemail server builds.

Over all, I have to say I like the VIA RAID the best because the software in Windows is the easiest to use. When you have a mirror RAID, it's so easy to swap out drives and rebuild in Windows which is great for a small server because you don't have to rebuild at the BIOS level, all your services are still running, etc.

But so far so good with the nVidia RAID. The only thing I noticed about it that I don't like is that WD Diag doesn't see the individual drives on the controller.

Actually Jon, it looks like you can rebuild in Windows (and a lot more). Go to
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html and look thru the
Media Shield User's guide pdf, the link is on the left side. I've been reading it as part of my prep guide prior to undertaking my planned migration. The rebuild section starts on page 130.

[jonnyGURU]

Ok. Never installed that. After you install all of the other drivers, the last thing it does before it reboots is asks you if you want to install the Meida Shield. Since everything works, I say "no." On the VIA RAID, the utility gets installed w/ the driver. :D

[SixIron]

I started messing with it last night before I was really prepared (I didn't ghost a backup first like I intended to do) and naturally mucked something up when I tried to create a 2 drive mirror with the existing drive data. Ended up nuking, creating the 0+1 set and fresh installing XP. I can already see a big diff in drive speed so all is good so far. And I have the Media Shield so I can play with it in Windows if need by.

[Pace]

Even though you seem to have already taken the plunge, might as well let you know that I just installed two Samsung HD400LJs couple weeks back, and they've been working fine in RAID 0 with my A8N-SLI Premium.

[syne_24]

Another good experience here with Raid-0 on the A8NSLI-Deluxe. My raptors ran consistent with that board. Even better than the ICH7 that I'm on now.

[jonnyGURU]

Another good experience here with Raid-0 on the A8NSLI-Deluxe. My raptors ran consistent with that board. Even better than the ICH7 that I'm on now.

That says a lot, because for the longest time I thought the Intel ICH7 was the shit when it came to SATA RAID.