Installing hardware RAID on new motherboard

[xdavexxx]

I purchased a Abit AV8 VIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard from tigerdirect a couple of weeks ago (you can still find it on tigerdirect, if you want more info, apparently I am not allowed to post URLs).

I have 2 80 GB hard drives (different brand, one is Westeren Digital and one is Maxtor). I would like to RAID them together to form 1 powerful drive.

I have no clue how to do so. The motherboard has built in Serial ATA/RAID, but how do I use that to combine the 2 drives?

 

[Nodsu]

You hook up the drives to the RAID controller.

You either press some key combinatin at bootup (you are told which one) to enter the RAID BIOS or you boot the RAID setup floppy/CD.

In the BIOS/setup program you create a new RAID 1 or 0 array and that's it. For any operating system the two drives will look as one.

PS
Read the friggin manual if all else fails

 

[VOYAGER]

Nodsu is right, you should read the manual. Then you will understand the reply you get. I checked your board out, and Unless i missed something while i was checking out you manual it doesn't look like like you have ide raid . If the drives that you have are not SATA then you have to get IDE to SATA converters to use the SATA raid. Or buy two WD 74 gig Raptors (they are the fastest drives around) or the diamond max 10 200gig drive(second fastest but are alot larger) and use them to build a SATA raid array.

 

[rwalter]

Complete data loss

Of course if you do all this, you need to understand that you will be starting from scratch. The first step in building a RAID array is to trash everything on the drives to build the striping. Also, the scenario you are outlining (one big drive) means "raid 0" which is for one big speedy drive. Raid 1 is for mirroring the drives. Some controllers have RAID 0+1 (takes 4 drives) for both speed and mirroring.

Regards,
RHW