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 |  Components, Peripherals, Cases, Mods, & Cooling Drives & Controllers Drives & Controllers Discuss ICH5R and software raid in the Components, Peripherals, Cases, Mods, & Cooling forums; Hi, Can someone explain me the difference between "software only" raid, using regular chipsets for accessing hard drives (... |
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11-12-2004, 06:15 PM
| #1 |
| Registered User Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 2
| ICH5R and software raid Hi, Can someone explain me the difference between "software only" raid, using regular chipsets for accessing hard drives (like intel ICH5), and software raid based on dedicated chipset like intel ICH5R??? With those chipsets, it looks like raid is handled by software driver, like with "software only" raid. So, how can those chips enhance performance? Thank you in advance for your answers, and sorry for my bad english... Lionel. |
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11-12-2004, 06:23 PM
| #2 |
| Registered User Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 13,497
| The ICH5R is a true hardware raid controller. All raid functions are performed within the controller itself. Windows sees SATA dirve raid arrays on the controller (asumung that they are set up as a raid array) as a single hard drive. IAA, the driver, is used by Windows to see the controller itself. The ICH5 does not contain any raid capabilities. Software raid is exactly that, a raid array using the CPU and software to control the writing to two or more drives located on the MB drive controllers as if they were an array. Clearly, this takes more CPU cycles to read and write then an array which is hardware controlled. |
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11-13-2004, 05:42 AM
| #3 |
| Registered User Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 2
| I'm not sure ICH5R is true hardware raid controller: indeed, OS like Windows, Linux can't see correctly the partitions without drivers. With true hardware raid, there is no need of piece of software to use disks. And such raid controllers are much more expensive. |
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11-13-2004, 06:23 AM
| #4 |
| Remembering TQ   Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Sweden
Posts: 13,638
| I believe you're right in that the ICH5R is not a true hardware RAID controller. The true hardware RAID controllers have a separate source for executing all necessary RAID commands, meaning a separate CPU, to remove any and all such load from the main CPU. The ICH5R does not contain this functionality and therefore can't be considered a true hardware RAID solution, at least not in my book. It is, however, more of a hardware solution than purely software RAID, in which case the operating system does all striping and data placement in the filesystem drivers. That isn't the case with the ICH5R as far as I know. (Intel's own true hardware RAID controllers usually employ an i960 embedded CPU for the dirty work, directly on the controller card, along with memory for it.)
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