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Mostly following a review of the new Abit legacy free mobo (AT7 MAX) which happened to come with 4xRAID IDE (Highpoint 374) ports as well as the usual 2xIDE standard mobo ports (VT8233A), it would appear that RAID controllers can be faster even when using 1 single IDE drive than the standard IDE on the mobo. Does anybody have experience of this, many mobos come with onboard RAID at very competative prices, are they worth it even without deploying multi-drive techniques?

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002 ... dex.x?pg=8

Another RAID query. having 4xRAID ports it would make sense that you can attach 8 IDE devices (4xmaster 4xslave). Therefor would this help when running 2 harddisks and a CDRW which present slight problems with only 2xIDE standard mobo ports as all three like to be masters?

I know the basics about RAID but thought you had to have at least 2 identical drives to get any performance gain. If the 2 above theories are correct it would be worth many average users considering it.

I run Windows XP if that makes any difference to these questions.

Thanx in advance .

Nice thing with the Abit board is the Hi point Raid controller that allows you to run stripping, mirroring or combination of both Raid 0,1,0+1
say 4 drives in stripping 2 drives in mirroring
most of the other board mans are using the promise controller and your choices are either stripping and or mirroring Raid 0,1
yep 8 Raid devices and 4 IDe devices
plus the 133 support maxtor740D series are 133 7200 rpm drives
Plenty of possibilities with the AT7 as long as you dont mind buying a few new USB compatable items or adapters

Not all onboard RAID controllers will give the performance boost the Highpoint 374 does. Some are slower than the chipset IDE, others marginally faster, yet others still are badass controllers like the 374 and just meander around kicking the ass of anything in site. Check reviews for the individual boards or controllers to see how things compare.

Placing each device on its own channel can improve performance in situations where both devices are trying to saturate the bus, and can generally cut down on conflicts. I wouldn't spend a [lot] more to get a board (or purchase a separate add-in card) just for this purpose, but if you've already got the ability, go for it.

I would not put two devices on an IDE channel in a RAID setup. One draw back to IDE is that the controller can only talk to 1 device on a channel at a time. Having that second device on a channel is going to slow things down because the controller will be waiting for a clear channel to send the data to the next device. Placing 8 device is possible but it will create a MAJOR bottleneck.

Think about this 4 120GB drives in a RAID 5 for fault tolerance is 360GB of online data storage. That is a LOT for one person. Hell I know companies that have less storage then that.