When setting up raid 1 do can you use sata drives?

i assume so as you can definately use SCSI and IDE and i know for afact my new SATA dell comes with built in RAID

Most motherboards I've seen that support SATA will usually support RAID 0 and 1.

Assuming the Epox mobo listed in your signature is the one you have, then yes you can do raid. The spec sheet I found online for it said is supports 0, 1, 0+1. Whether or not thats for sata or just ide Im not sure.

You can set up any type of RAID 1 configuration as long as your raid card supports the connections.When setting up RAID REMEMBER the secondary bios!!!

To access the secondary bios you press "ctrl" + the first letter of your chipset manufacturer(n for nvidea, i for intel etc)
The BIOS differs based on the manufacturer but you need to create an array using your two disks and then save.

IMPORTANT:If you set up a 250gb hd and a 20 gb hd on a RAID 1 configuration you will end up with....One 20 gb hard drive!!!!!!!Windows sees the RAID controller as one hard drive and anything below the Raid controller on the bus is invisible to the O.S unless you have a specialised program using a bios hook.

If your raid card doesn't have an onboard battery(most cheap ones don't)you can lose recent data in a power cut if write back caching is enabled.Best to be aware.

If you knew most of this already then yes,fire away with a Sata raid array.If most of this is news to you might I recommend visiting the drive suppliers website and searching for a RAID installation guide?

Almost forgot,when you get you're sata RAID 1 up and running look for an app called IOMeter.It's a handy little doohickey that will show you the speed differences between one hard drive,raid and raid with read ahead and write back enabled

It is actually a new MSI K9N platinum for the AM2. I have since found out that it will work to even a raid 5. I have never set up a raid before but I gotta learn sometime. What is this with the dual bios?

Firstly forget the RAID 5 unless you want to shell out way to much money.RAID 5 is designed with a parity drive for pretty much mission critical stuff, although you can go even higher!

If the card manufacturer is MSI press "ctrl" + "m" where you would normally go into the Bios(It's during POST,most systems will prompt you in the top right).

I assume,of course, that at this stage you've installed the RAID drivers. These overlay a secondary Bios.Heres a little diag of how the raid card works -

__________
|Operating|
| System |
`````````
| ----Windows looks for hard drives
_________
|raid card| ----Raid says"here I am,one HDD.What you got 4 me?"
`````````
| |
____ ____
| | | |
|HD | |HD| ----Raid hides the drives from windows and sorts all the
| | | | ----writing itself.Without "write back caching" there will
```` ```` ----be a performance slowdown with a Raid 1 config
(Sorry about diag quality)


"Write back caching" is enabled/disabled in you're PRIMARY bios(the one you always had).With it on the Raid is again lying to windows-

Windows - "here write this to yourself(remember it thinks raid is a drive)

Raid -"Thanks I'm done,gimme more!"

What raid has done here is taken the data,stored it in it's cache(basically onboard ram) and lied saying "written,give me more"

The advantages are obvious.Based on a raid with pretty good cache space you can theoretically run two 5,400 rpm Hd's at sata speed and beyond.

The disadvantage is unless you're raid has a built in battery you lose recent data in a power cut because raid may not have finished transferring cache to hard drive.

Anyway now that you(hopefully)understand Raid you go into your raid bios.Select your two hard drives(usually done by moving from left column to right column) and select "create array".I would strongly recommend raid 1,raid 0 is far too volatile.An ideal would be raid 10 or 0+ 1 assuming you can afford the 4 hard drives and your raid card supports it.

Thats pretty much it.Save and exit.Raid will probably tell you the new drive you hooked in has degraded and start building a copy onto it which does not eat any cpu or ram.The raid does it all.Pretty cool huh?

VERY IMPORTANT: if at any stage you lose a drive and need to install a new one DO NOT INITIALISE YOUR WORKING DRIVE!EVER!
Initialising wipes the drive clean so you'll lose all the data you're setting up raid to safeguard in the first place.The same goes for when you set up the array.If it asks if you want to initialise you're current hard drive with the OS installed on it (it won't say this it will ask initialise drive 0: seagate 150gb or whatever,just know which is your important one) say NO.If it asks for your new blank hard drive or if you want to use an old HD and don't mind losing the data DO initialise it.

Raid is tricky to set up and an enormous call generator for me at work so if you have any doubts or if I havn't explained clearly enough PLEASE post another message BEFORE you try anything

So it's not just plug and play. Looks like a little bit of work but shouldn't be too hard.
So I install the os, put in the raid floppy, installl that go through installation of os. Before I do any updates or anything like that I should go into the raid directions you say here and go to the secondary bios. After that I will do my installs as normal?

If you intend to re-install then you should ALWAYS install you're Chipset,then video and then Raid as you will have less problems if something does go wrong.

You can set up raid without a re-installation.In this case you set up an array with the new blank hd and you're system HD.Initialize the new HD and Raid will start copying an image of itself onto the new HD.While this is happening you can load windows and do whatever you like with no slowdown on the CPU or RAM.HD will be busy though,obviously

This is a brand new machine. Total new install. Should I update the chipset to the newest update? Also what about a the latest bios and video card update?

I have a computer with two hd in but no raid. Can I do a raid with this computer without losing any info?