How To Tell If Your Motherboard Is RAID Compatible

[poopyman67]

How can you tell if your motherboard is RAID Compatible?? I don't know what type of motherboard I have, I tried figuring it out, but I couldn't. Is there any way to do so without having to open up the case?? I want to install a nwe hard drive(well two, actually, since I'm going to use RAID). Oh, and one last question, I know that there are two different settings, which one is the one I would want to use to have the two to add up to create a larger hard drive, it would be stupid to put them in tandem because I dont have any really crucial information on here, just Simpsons episodes.

[JoshT]

Get a hold of the MB manual (dig it out of the closet or get it off the maker's web site) - that should tell you. Else, watch carefully when you boot for the RAID controller's BIOS screen - or check your BIOS settings for the choice to enable/disable one. Maybe even your OS's list of drivers.

Else, if you have a free PCI slot you can just by one and stick it in.

You're thinking of RAID level 0 - striping with no fault tolerance. There's actual all sorts of RAID levels, RAID 0, 1, 5 and combinations of tend to be the most common, and software-based IDE RAID controllers might not do level 5.

[siyan]

you can do pure software RAID with windows NT/2K/XP (pro only i believe). It will likely do 0 or 1.

Raid 5 needs a dedicated, usually full length RAID card with a coproessor onboard for the XOR calculations.

[scr0p]

Use a program like Sisoft sandra to find what mObO you have then look on websites to see whaT it supports.