Dual 4870s on a M17x prevents RAIDed Drives?

It's built into BIOS so it can be configured to appear as a native, single drive to an OS installer; without the need for drivers to be installed at the same time as the OS; if this was not the case; then you'd be back to the situation we were in 3/4 years back [during the early P3/P4 and AMDXP or earlier periods] where to run pretty much any cheaper raid setup without an expensive addon card with Boot ROM, you'd have to install drivers upon loading the BIOS installers or it wouldnt work properly, or even more commonly, the drives/RAID setup wouldn't even be recognised. Hell,even soft raid functionality wasnt even offered on anything below enthusiast or server boards more than a few years ago.

True hardware RAID is damned expensive, and the cards tend to contain integrated processors designed to managed HDDs, error check, and optimally run the various RAID solutions (0,1, 5, 1+0,0+1, JBOD etc), over multiple hard drives without requiring much/any CPU time, which pushes the cost up. Software RAID is much easier to implement, and whilst it doesnt work as well as a hardware setup, its much cheaper.

I've forgotten the name of the companies that specialise in this off the top of my head, but some of the cards, especially server grades ones cost about as much as the M17x alone haha

Then you've got SCSI drives which are still used in servers etc as well

Thats not to say software RAID is a bad thing, its just not a resilient, versatile, or as quick as hardware RAID, but then the difference is in the cost!

 

go look up the chipset spec's

but you dont have to believe us seriously what do we know ... we r tards

 

Amen... my post above was designed to boggle the mind and confusticate your feeble senses.

On a more serious note, here's a fairly basic hardware RAID controller (4 channel). Only about $500
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-LI&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=

Imagine how much the cost multiplies by as the number of supported RAID channels increases (10+ drives in RAID0 wouldnt be uncommon for extra hardware redundancy).

As you can see from the specs the card is virtually a small PC in its own right, purely designed to coordinate a RAID config, and the specs give you an idea how much more complex RAID can get compared to the basic software variant.

By the way, when I mentioned CPU being used by software RAID, if you bench test a software RAID setup, its not crippling, but you'll often find it consuming 2-5% on a modern CPU. Not a major hit, but thats just with 2 drives, with a hardware solution you'd be looking less than 1% in most cases, as the RAID processor handles the hard work, and it becomes a simple 'OI, CPU, ERE'S YA DATA' haha.

 

Please keep this thread on topic and leave the insults at the door. Thanks.

 

It seems that you can config RAID HDD now.

 

Maybe this also means our orders will start moving.

 

well, I changed mine to a single drive and am ticked that I made the change since after 3 days they found the fix!....But, no going to start over in the que!

 

500GB hdd are cheap. Just do it yourself.

 

thats my plan! lol

 

wt(f) !? After all I've been through they decided that it actually can be supported now ?!????

 

Some starnge goings on here, thats for sure

 

perhaps they worked out the kinks now?

 

I think it's above and beyond lameness on the DELL's side to screw their customers who had to re-order the system twice already because of that sole issue that was not tested/reviewed prior to the actual launch .... Im UBER disappointed with their tech/logic strategies and knowledge of their own stuff.

 

yeah - that is lame. They should have fixed it first, then made it available. It's not like they would have lost any sales by waiting....

 

^ Exactly !