Will two raptors on a Maximus Formula work in RAID 0?

First enable it on start up in bios. Then follow instructions with the controller for your board, should be in the manual or onscreen at boot. You must have a Floppy drive with the raid drivers on it for your particular board

There is a simple answer to that very question! I believe that mobo does have a set of RAID controllers,...so yes with that you should be set! Make sure you do the whole loading the sata drivers by floppy on windows setup start-up (f6 prompt)! In the manual there should be a complete step-by-step instruction on how to set up a RAID0,..that should be done of course before you install windows. If you bought yr motherboard by (open box) AND there is no manual,...asus.com will always have it! Any questions....please ask!(btw,...why are u buying,...the Maximus Formula?) (get a m3n332-mvp with a phenom black edition,...OCed to 3.02) (it'll save you 300 bucks and,...get you 1 whore of a good pc)

no,..if your planing on running vista,...a pen drive will work fine!

Does anybody know?

k,..this is what i suggest! I believe yr raiding for a speed increase,..not a large back up of your hard drive,..thus raid0....is ideal. In the vista setup i believe it will ask whether or not u want to install raid, scsi or (sata) drivers,....thus the pen driver should work fine as its source to load from. The raid drivers I believe should be integrated,...via bios,..check if there's a upgrade available. (this should be done before vista setup of course) To setup your raid there should be direct instructions in your manual,...there's a hotkey you hit before loading from the cd (DVD),....which launches the raid utility,...from there on it should be smooth sailing.

I feel that most people suggest, which I support, that RAID 0 isn't worth the performance improvement. You've got the best drives around at the moment. I'd put them in as two separate drives and have the OS on one and swap files, games, etc. on the other*.

point 3 - I was wondering if you were upgrading your motherboard and wanted to move all your kit across. In that case I would have begged you to re-install the OS.
point 5 - Some drivers are included with Vista - you'd need to double check.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx? [...] 3=572&l4=0
Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10,

http://www.intel.com/support/chips [...] 023632.htm
Q2: Will Intel provide RAID drivers in the final version of the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system?
A: Yes. Intel will provide an Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID driver as part of the final Microsoft Windows Vista release. This RAID driver will support Intel® chipsets with the following I/O controller hubs when RAID is enabled:

Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O controller hub (ICH8R)
Intel® 631xESB/632xESB I/O controller hub
Intel® 82801GHM I/O controller hub (ICH7MDH)
Intel® 82801GR I/O controller hub (ICH7R)
Intel® 82801GH I/O controller hub (ICH7DH)
Intel® 82801FR I/O controller hub (ICH6R

Please read http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki- [...] iveVsRaid0, as quoted by geofelt in another thread.


* Well not really I'd rather go for RAID 1 but I think you'd get closer to what you want with less pain.

These days mobo's have two raid controllers,...i guess for the reason of having a raid on one and single sata hard drives on the other! What i would do is,..find out witch one is located on the south bridge of your mobo,...probably the Intel Matrix Storage. Anyways, i would put my raid on that,....being that its probably easer to set up and likely to perform better. Anything else you plan to hook-up,..throw that on the JMicron. I wouldn't be surprised if its something to like ctrl+I to enter the raid utility (Intel controller) .

RAID 0 does offer better performance. Did you read the link that geofelt provided? If not please do so as I think it's a very balanced article.

Bear in mind however, that data striped across multiple drives is much more vulnerable to loss as a physical failure of even one drive results in the loss of all data on the entire array. If capacity is the goal, it is almost always better to run the two drives as separate units.

What about performance? This, we suspect, is the primary reason why so many users doggedly pursue the RAID 0 "holy grail." This inevitably leads to disappointment by those that notice little or no performance gain.

This refers to the hardware (chips) on the motherboard that provide the functionality. The Intel chips provide the RAID functionality on the SATA connectors. The PATA chips control the IDE devices. Drivers to allow Vista to communicate with the hardware will be provided by Asus with the motherboard.

As someone mentioned prior, during the first boot after the system POSTed, it takes you to another screen with an option to enter the RAID utility. CTRL-I sounds right, but it could be some other combination.

You will have to enable RAID operation and set up the drives in RAID before you install Vista. Otherwise Vista would just format one of the drives and install it on a that, and not the array.

One other note: Any time you update the BIOS on the motherboard, you will most likely be required to reset the operation of the SATA drives to RAID before your computer will boot up properly again. As the default settings seem to reset this option.

1. When you set up RAID it will require you to enter the type of array etc, and you cannot change this at any time. You may want to do some reading on RAID setup and management before you go this route.

2. It may, or may not. Generally there will be something new out between the time the motherboard is packaged and you receive it. However, you do not need to update the BIOS unless there is a release that fixes a specific problem you are having. (IE: CPU support, etc) Recent ASUS BIOS come with an EZ Update program built into the BIOS that requires storing a BIOS image file on a key drive. ASUS also has a windows update program that will update the BIOS, for most of their boards. Like I said, it shouldn't be necessary unless you're having problems with something that a new BIOS update would fix.

I know i am going to use RAID 0 when setting it up but i was wondering if there are other settings i have to set up. Like the stripe setting or anything else?

You will have to set the stripe size, yes. You cannot change this without backing up the data, wiping the array out, creating a new array, and then loading from the back up.

Stripe size depends on your average use... large file versus small file. The larger the files you deal with, the larger the stripe size you can/should use. Some reading on the topic may help you decide, but 64kb or 128kb should be fine for general use.

You may even choose to leave the default stripe size the RAID utility is set at. Small striping causes decreased performance in the writing of massive files, large stripes nullify any benefit of the RAID setup in writing of files smaller than a single stripe.

If your use is gaming, and downloading big files from the internet, it will be safer, easier, and faster to use both raptors as separate individual hard disks.

Download speeds from the internet are limited by your internet speed, not the hard drive speed, so there is no advantage there.

As to games, there are some plusses, and some minuses from raid-0. Net is a performance wash. I suggest you put your os on one drive, and your games on the other. With two raptors, you will have the very best reasonably priced configuration available today. Add in a good defrag of the hdd with the game levels, and you are good to go.

I am waiting for SSD's to become reasonable in price.

I ran 36GB Raptors in RAID 0 on my old P4 system. In my opinion, it wasn't worth the hassle and exponential increase in the probability of the RAID failing. If one drive dies, you lose it all. But to each his own.

If I were you, I'd install Vista and a few programs/games on a single drive. Take note of the performance. THEN format and reinstall everything in RAID 0 and see if it's everything you thought it would be. My guess is that it won't be.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl= [...] tripe+size

up at falcon they are having increasing customer
complaints with the raid arrays due to controller issues.
falcon suggests that you do not raid.

That's for XP, not Vista.

Just want to add my $.02 here. I have the Asus P5E, which is the little brother to the Maximus Formula. Initially, I have run TWO WD 74 GB Raptors in Raid 0 with NO issues. Prior to the P5E, I ran the same two drives on two other motherboards...first an Asus P4C800E and then the Asus P5B Deluxe. Over a total three and a half year period, I have NEVER experienced any issues with these drives in RAID 0. I currently have upgraded to ONE Velociraptor 300 GB and am about to purchase a second in a month or so...and will go back to RAID 0. These Raptor drives from WD are enterprise drives...even WD will tell you that they can sustain and maintain RAID 0 very well. I have never lost one file...The performance of the single drive Hits 130 on the outer and minimum 80 on the inner with an average seek rate of 108 on my machine. Reports in RAID 0 are supposed to be Outer 166 / Inner 120 with an average somewhere in the 130's. The drives are really built well...and I don't think that you will encounter any issues. I will admit that I back my system up weekly...with Acronis TI 10 and an external Firewire drive (I have done regular backups for years...based on the warnings...and have only needed to restore because I did something to corrupt my data...not the Raptors).

Follow your own path. If you want RAID 0 with two Velociraptors...you ARE gonna see a good incrrease. All in all...they are great drives...capable of RAID 0 without even breaking a sweat...

Good Luck

Bob

My God this thread has gotten way too complicated.
I've done RAID0 on Maximus Formula Vista x64 --- Here's the answer:

Boot to Bios / Main / SATA Configuration
---- Configure SATA As: RAID ----
Save and exit -
Setup your drives as striped in the config menu on reboot.
Save and exit -
Boot to your Vista CD and install. Vista will detect the RAID0 config and install the
OS onto the array (seeing the raptors as a single drive)

Presto!