Testing / comparing : Intel D975XBX2 / Asus P5B DX ***56K WARNING***

[gtj]

I think i should be going for RAID 1 in this case. I always wanted to backup my data in such a way that if a new data is entered into drive A, an exact data is replicated in say drive B.

Some questions though.
1. For RAID 1 to work, what options, configurations, software (Intel Matrix Storage Console), drivers do i need to install other than hitting the F6 option in the XP installation ?
2. I'll be having 2X 320GB Sata HD. Does this mean i will effectively have only 320Gb of space after implementing RAID 1 ?
3. What are meant by strip size? What are the amount i should put in when creating the RAID set (as stated in the manual) ?
4. Is it possible to create partition(s) within the RAID drives itself? I.e. splitting the 320Gb to say 200GB (Drive C) and 120 (drive D).
5. Let's say, I have already installed XP w/o the RAID drivers. Is there anyway to bypass the XP installation again ?

p.s. Btw, how did removing the master jumper solved the IDE dvd drive problem? Care to explain ? Thanks

1: When you enable RAID mode for the Intel SATA controller, you'll get another BIOS screen. Hit CTRL-I and you can create your array. See my notes below though.

2: Correct. You'll see a single 320G drive in Windows.

3. The stripe size specifies how big the blocks written to the array are. If 64K for instance, and there are 2 drives, that means that 32k will be written to each drive. Not really important for RAID 1 since all data goes to both drives. Set to the highest. I forget if that's 64k or 128k,

4: Yep. In Windows disk management you'll see a single 320G drive that you can partition as you see fit.

5: If you have Windows installed on the IDE drive then you're in good shape. First, get the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager package from http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/
Then restart the system and put the controller in RAID mode and create the array using the new BIOS screen that will pop up. Now reboot and when Windows comes up, you should get a prompt for drivers. Just cancel and install the full package you got from Intel.

EDIT: The jumper thing... I'm guessing you had the ide hard drive and the dvd on different ide controllers on your old board so they could both be masters. Since the bx2 has only 1 ide port when you connected both devices you had 2 masters on the same controller which isn't valid. When the ide driver loaded it got very confused. Removing the jumper on the dvd put it in "cable select" mode which made it be a slave instead of master.