Motherboard quandry....help ! ! !

[AJL14]

For Mike D., Kenneally, Brandon, Pat, Dave, Anton....and etc., etc., etc.

Here's a new one. Planned the new system around the Asus P5K Delux board (on compatibility list!). Got the board. Can exchange it - once! Weird situation. Intel P35 SATA RAID controller chipset will not allow single SATA System Drive and RAID 0 Video drives. Chipset sets only for one type -and ALL drives must be that type. Set to RAID, system drive must also be RAID configuration. Set to non-RAID, no drives can be RAID (onboard)! E-SATA is separate contoller.

Possible Solution # 1. Make the System drive an IDE drive instead of SATA, which is NOT controlled by SATA RAID controller. But before I do this, I must ask you guys one BIG question. While running EDIUS, how much does the program access the System drive on which the EDIUS program lies. If only the Video RAID drives determine the speed of EDIUS, then an IDE System Drive would not hurt performance. Yes?????

Possible solution # 2. Build a RAID array for the SYstem drive - which most of us (not all of us), feel is not worth the money and trouble. A "boot array" is a royal pain in the 'ars to configure.

Possible Solution # 3. The ASUS P5N32-E SLI board HAS an nVideo SATA controller on it - and that controller DOES allow a single SATA system HDD, and RAID HDD Arrays for other drives located "on computer" - such as removeable trays with 2 identical RAID Video Drives. BUT - this board is NOT on the campatibilty list, and thus, I'm a bit hesitant to swap the P5K board out for a P5N32-E SLI board, unless some of you know this board works with the DVStorm2 card.

I can only swap once, and if the P5N32-E SLI board doesn't work, I'm in deep doodoo! Don't know the difference between the PCI access between the
P5K and P5N boards - and I'm still using the DVStorm2 - as it still works quite well with SD.

I open this to the forum, and perhaps the responses might be of great value to all who are planning to build new editing machines with new technologies around the EDIUS NLE. Seems there are a lot of questions regarding motherboards, chipsets, video cards, etc. I will update all results as I put the system together,

Any thoughts? My thanks to all - as ever.....
Alan

[antonsvideo]

I am not familiar with that board but you should be able to go to disk management and convert any disk other that the system disk to dynamic and then stripe them to Raid0, all done in disk management

the system disk need to be a basic disk

[AJL14]

Thanks, Anton. But this board doesn't seem to work that way, since the SATA drives are hooked directly to the SATA contoller, and that P35 controller HAS to set the type of drives - RAID or NON-RAID. CAn't be controlled by the "disk management" setup outside of the contoller. But I'll keep trying. What about the IDE system drive - any slowdown when EDIUS is on that drive?
Cheers,
Alan

[pjsssss]

I don't know that board either Alan, but that just does not sound right. I can't imagine that you could not have a single SATA drive along with SATA RAID. I would call support on that and get clarification.

I wold not use an IDE drive for the system drive. I know there were some problems with SLI boards in the past, but then I have seen some users with them lately, so I can't even make a guess on that one.

[AJL14]

Pat, you're not going to believe this one, but I spent a total of an hour and forty minutes in two sessions with the "supervisor" of the Asus Level 3 Support team (the advanced support, since regular support couldn't help at all and forward me "upstairs"). All of the information in my above post is directly from Asus Support. The main reason I called back was that I studied in depth the entire manual for the board, and agreed 100% with you, that they must be wrong in their observations. Not that the manual said otherwise! The second call finally resulted in the fact "either RAID or no-RAID" is a peculiarity of the onboard Intel SATA controller chip that contols EACH of the 6 SATA ports - AS A GROUP, NOT INDEPENDANTLY - and has to be configured the same for each port.

That's why I was inquiring of all of you who know the inner-workings of the EDIUS software into the question of whether an IDE System HDD would negatively affect the operating speed of EDIUS, as long as the Video was in a RAID0 configuration? I don't know from where the transitions, effects, PinP's, color-correction, mattes, etc. are controlled. By the EDIUS program located on the System HDD?

Anyway, believe me, I spent a lot of time trying to solve this one with Asus Support before coming aboard the forum with these questions.

Talk to you soon,
Alan

[antonsvideo]

I have been using an IDE for years for C drive with no problems, what to watch for is that you check disk speed on a regular basis because IDE drives can pop into PIO mode and then the PC is sluggish, but when it happens, it is easily fixed

I recently changed it to a 15,000rpm SCSI (things start faster)

btw, I am surprised that such a mobo would be on the Canopus approved list

[tingsern]

My OS, EDIUS programs, transitions, etc - are all on ONE SCSI RAID 5 drive - that is physically consists of 4 SCSI 130GB volumes, that are controlled by the Adaptec SCSI controller. There are 7 partitions (1 primary, 6 secondary) in that RAID5 drive. The system boots up from the primary partition (and then depending on the option I select - there are 3 OSes inside - 2 WinXP and 1 WinXP 64 - it can either continue from the primary partition or go to one of the seconary partitions.

The other 4 SCSI drives are configured as RAID 0 - for working areas (and Windows SWAP disks). I designate one partition for one WINDOWS SWAP file - and nothing else in there. So - 3 OSes means 3 partitions (each holding its own swap file).

I don't have any issues about performance whatsoever (it is very fast).

I also have 3 SATA2 drives that are connected to board's onboard SATA controller (Intel chipset) - which is configured as RAID0 (stripe) ... that is where the video files are (AVI, P2 MXF, etc, etc). No problems at all with performance again ... 3 SATA2 drives are "enterprise version" - 10,000 RPM 1TB disks.

[AJL14]

btw, I am surprised that such a mobo would be on the Canopus approved list

Me too, Anton. Surprising setup for an "advanced" mobo! Thanks for your IDE advice. Seems to be the way to go, unless I do a RAID1 System HDD.
Alan

[gdame]

I would go with the ASUS P5K64 WS, An Intel Core 2 CPU that supports 1333 FSB (i.e. 9650 Quad Extreme) & OCZ DDR3 Platinum 1333 Memory.

This recipe plays well together.

George Dame
Grass Valley / Canopus System Integrator - 10 Years

[gdame]

Install a SATA-300 drive on sata-1, an image clone on sata-2, a pioneer Blu-Ray burner on sata-3 that's it! No onboard raid.

Quadro FX1500 or higher in the top (blue) PCIe 16x slot
The HighPoint RocketRaid 2310 right below it. Set this up in the raid level that you prefer. A four drive array (4 x 1TB) set up as 0 + 1 averages 177MB/sec. That is with full redundancy!

Put the NX Express (PCIe Version) and expansion board in the two other PCIe slots.

You will still have two 32 bit PCI slots available for whatever legacy product you may need.

So, this will give you Quad Core, 1333 FSB and screaming performance!

George Dame
Grass Valley / Canopus System Integrator - 10 Years

[Aristotelis]

I tried as well to built a system with P5K Premium (same sata controller as P5K deluxe) and had a similar problem...the raid controller would allow me to have a separate disk for system and 4 disks for video in RAID5 but after installing windows and started using the raid5 volume the system crashed... I tried everything and spent almost 2 days trying but never found a solution so I tested the P5KR motherboard and it works perfect!!
One sata disk for system and 4 sata in raid5 in a separate controller...

[Imagine Video]

gdame


Have yo used this board and setup you advise? if so how does the NXe and the expansion/video out board fit in the two top pcie slots?

Been told it wont fit.

In too may be in the same boat with onboard raid contoller.....P5KE board ?

[shueardm]

I would not want to use the same controller for OS & Raid anyway. I don't think even my Supermicro board can do this (and I dont care).
Dont flinch at a few hundred dollars, go buy a 4 port RAID card from 3ware or Areca.

[Imagine Video]

Indeed a raid card is cheap BUT there are no free PCI e x4 slots to put it once you have an NXe setup

UNLESS you know of a PCIe raid card that will give the correct data throughput on a PCI e x1 slot????????

Cath

[shueardm]

Comes down to Canopus's rediculous decision to implement a 2 x PCI-e system way before it was necessary. You're right I didn't consider that. This is why I believe whole-hartedly in using server boards with PCI-X slots and either EDIUS SP or NX with PCI expansion board (if you can get one) + a PCI-X Raid card.