Great answers. Sorry for delay on my reply.


The advantage of the ATA driver, is that there is no dependency on
the "hidden sector" and its contents. And possibly, a difference in
performance by not having to go through the RAID driver code.

This is a bit too technical for me. Could you detail it a bit?


AFAIK, when an ICH5 type southbridge is run in non-RAID mode, the
drivers are in the OS. In compatible mode, an older OS like Win98
access the hardware via I/O addresses. In enhanced mode, an OS like
Win2K or WinXP accesses the hardware via PCI addresses. I believe in
both cases, there is a driver in the OS appropriate to the situation.
The third case, is an ICH5R SATA ports, where RAID has been enabled.
You can use the Intel Application Accelerator RAID driver, such as
IAAR35. It is not part of INFINST (the chipset drivers). You can
download this from the Intel site if you want. It runs under WinXP.
Again, no idea what you will see in the Device Manager. I'm not a
RAID guy.

Also, more detail on Compatible versus Enhanced mode.


Julian