Suggestions on TRUE Hardware RAID Motherboard -- EIDE or Serial ATA

Hi All,

I'm setting up a server that might have Windows, Linux, or really any
OS installed on it (not sure what customer wants at this point), and
I'd like suggestions on motherboards with TRUE Hardware RAID that
doesn't rely on any drivers in the OS. I've worked with HighPoint and
Promise RAID on EPoX boards and such, but these generally require
drivers installed at the OS for them to work properly.

Basically I want to setup two mirrored HD's as the boot drive and then
two more MASSIVE HD's also mirrored as data drives. I don't want the
OS to even see that RAID is happening, yet if one drive dies I'd like
it to seamlessly keep going off the remaining drive where I can
shutdown system, replace faulty drive with new drive, reboot, and all
is good with RAID controller copying data to the new drive from
existing one.

It's my understanding that this is how true Hardware RAID is supposed
to work, but I'm having no luck finding a mobo that works like this.

Suggestions please??? Thanks,

- Ringo -

www.3ware.com



"Ringo Langly" wrote in message
om...
Hi All,

I'm setting up a server that might have Windows, Linux, or really any
OS installed on it (not sure what customer wants at this point), and
I'd like suggestions on motherboards with TRUE Hardware RAID that
doesn't rely on any drivers in the OS. I've worked with HighPoint and
Promise RAID on EPoX boards and such, but these generally require
drivers installed at the OS for them to work properly.

Basically I want to setup two mirrored HD's as the boot drive and then
two more MASSIVE HD's also mirrored as data drives. I don't want the
OS to even see that RAID is happening, yet if one drive dies I'd like
it to seamlessly keep going off the remaining drive where I can
shutdown system, replace faulty drive with new drive, reboot, and all
is good with RAID controller copying data to the new drive from
existing one.

It's my understanding that this is how true Hardware RAID is supposed
to work, but I'm having no luck finding a mobo that works like this.

Suggestions please??? Thanks,

- Ringo -

In message
(Ringo Langly) wrote:

I'm setting up a server that might have Windows, Linux, or really any
OS installed on it (not sure what customer wants at this point), and
I'd like suggestions on motherboards with TRUE Hardware RAID that
doesn't rely on any drivers in the OS. I've worked with HighPoint and
Promise RAID on EPoX boards and such, but these generally require
drivers installed at the OS for them to work properly.

Basically I want to setup two mirrored HD's as the boot drive and then
two more MASSIVE HD's also mirrored as data drives. I don't want the
OS to even see that RAID is happening, yet if one drive dies I'd like
it to seamlessly keep going off the remaining drive where I can
shutdown system, replace faulty drive with new drive, reboot, and all
is good with RAID controller copying data to the new drive from
existing one.

It's my understanding that this is how true Hardware RAID is supposed
to work, but I'm having no luck finding a mobo that works like this.

I've used both HighPoint and Promise chipsets before and never had any
problems, except that the OS needs drivers -- The drivers aren't
directly RAID related, it's just that Windows doesn't know how to talk
to that controller without drivers.

The drives are still accessible from DOS or anything that uses the BIOS
calls (and doesn't need explicit "drivers")


--
I've given up on sigs. I just couldn't think of anything clever to say.

There are NO motherboards built with on-board RAID configured as
sophisticatedly as you require. You are looking at building a high end
server configuration that uses one or two expensive dedicated Adaptec RAID
cards.

--
DaveW



"Ringo Langly" wrote in message
om...
Hi All,

I'm setting up a server that might have Windows, Linux, or really any
OS installed on it (not sure what customer wants at this point), and
I'd like suggestions on motherboards with TRUE Hardware RAID that
doesn't rely on any drivers in the OS. I've worked with HighPoint and
Promise RAID on EPoX boards and such, but these generally require
drivers installed at the OS for them to work properly.

Basically I want to setup two mirrored HD's as the boot drive and then
two more MASSIVE HD's also mirrored as data drives. I don't want the
OS to even see that RAID is happening, yet if one drive dies I'd like
it to seamlessly keep going off the remaining drive where I can
shutdown system, replace faulty drive with new drive, reboot, and all
is good with RAID controller copying data to the new drive from
existing one.

It's my understanding that this is how true Hardware RAID is supposed
to work, but I'm having no luck finding a mobo that works like this.

Suggestions please??? Thanks,

- Ringo -