Hi,

I have a Asus P4C800-E mainboard. At the moment I have 2x120gb disks on the primary RAID S-ATA connections running as a RAID+0, also installed on one of the the P-ATA ports is a 200gb disk to run incremental ghost backups of the array on the 2x120gb disks to.

What I was planning on doing is installing another 2x120gb disks to the secondry RAID S-ATA connections and buliding a RAID+1 stripe onto them, formatting the 200gb HD and using it for storing data that I can afford to loose.

Is this possible or is there a maximum of 4 HDs system wide?

Thanks in advance

After I installed 5 120gb HD's (video work), I had to increase my power supply, too, or I had lots of windows problems. I upped to 650watts, and everything has been fine on both of the machines with 5 hardrives since then

There is probably a limit to the number of harddisks on a system, depending on the OS, but it's nowhere as low as 4. I have the Asus P4P-800 deluxe mainboard, the little brother of your board, and have had up to 6 harddisks connected to it at once. Two on the normal IDE channel (the other channel has a DVD reader and DVD writer), 2 on the RAID channel, and 2 on the SATA ports. I could also add external harddisks via USB2 or Firewire, and can add 2 more on the secondary RAID channel. I could buy a PATA or SATA PCI card (or more than 1), and get even more. Some newer premium mainboards have 8 SATA plugs on them.

Of course, like Ajarn says, you need to watch the power. With more than 2 CD drives and 2 HDDs, you'll be in short supply of watts of you're using the standard 400 baht case power supplies. I'm using an Enermax, with 450watts. I had power problems with my old supply. Another thing to watch is that most modern harddisks generate a LOT of heat, and if you don't have proper cooling, they could get cooked. You could lose data that way.

An alternative is to upgrade the drives. Maxtor drives, if they have the Maxwell warranty sticker and are still within warranty, can be upgraded if you pay the difference.

Coincidence.. I run the exact same board (P4P800-E Deluxe).. I read a little bit about RAID-0 and nothing I read was very positive about it.. So I didn't go there and just run an S-ATA drive and then one on the regular IDE ports as well as a CD-RW and DVD+-RW drive.. And all of it on the cheapo PSU which I think is just 350 Watt.. :-/ I'd like to get a better PSU (especially also one that's quieter) but they're not cheap are they.. There's this huge gap in price from a 300 baht unit and then suddenly the next one up is around 2000 baht..

The 350watt el-cheapo power supply (real power probably around 250-300W) will be just about enough for your setup. Add one or two more peripherals, and you'll start to see weird things happening. There was one time where I couldn't do a reliable on the fly CD copy... I changed the power supply, and it worked. I used my old el-cheapo supply until it died, from fan failure (and subsequent overheating). Then I just took the plunge and got an Enermax, since I knew I would be adding a lot more peripherals.

RAID 0 is faster than a single drive, but it's also more risky. Lose one drive and you lose the data on both. RAID 1 is safer than a single drive, but you lose half the capacity. RAID 5 is a nice compromise, but in the end not many people are willing to buy 3 drives.

I bought this board based on overclockability, extra IDE ports, firewire, and the fact that it performed nearly as well as the more expensive P4C board. In the beginning, not many shops carried it, since it was too expensive for most. I got it for around 6,000 back then.. it's around 4,000 now.

New Nforce4 boards will run two 4 drive raid arrays plus 4 on pATA... TB easily done...