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I've been running a 2 disk RAID0 from the Marvell raid controller on my 975XBX2 board for about 8 months with no problems. I just got a 3rd hard drive and thought I would change to a RAID5. I installed the harddrive and accessed the Marvell BIOS interface. My Marvell BIOS version is 1.1.0.34 and would only let me build a raid0/1/10. I booted into Windows, updated with the latest Marvell GUI software from the Intel site, and created a RAID5 out of 3 disks. Windows disk manager saw the RAID as one large, unformatted disk. I formatted the new RAID5 as NTFS and rebooted. Now my boot hangs at where the Windows splash screen would normally appear.

If I disable the Marvell controller in the BIOS, the machine boots. If I unplug one of the SATA cables from the Marvell controller (so now the raid shows up as degraded) the machine boots. I tried to use the Marvell BIOS interface to delete the RAID5. Even though it says it deleted it, on reboot the RAID5 still shows up when the Marvell BIOS detects the drives on boot.

So,

1. Is anyone else running a RAID5 off of the Marvell controller?
2. I could not find any way to flash the Marvell MOBO controller BIOS. Is there a way to do this and is there a newer version of the BIOS for the Marvell than 1.1.0.34?
3. I did not update to the latest Intel BIOS for the MOBO, since the BIOS version I am using has been stable and has not caused any problems for my setup. I'm not sure why, but would I need the latest Intel BIOS to get the Marvell RAID5 to work?
4. Any other ideas?

thanks,

dave

Updating the motherboard BIOS should be the first thing you do. I do not know if it will resolve your issue but I wouldn't be surprised. I'm running 4 drives in Raid 10 on the matrix controller and haven't had any problems. Is there a reason you prefer the marvell?

I was running the Jan 08 BIOS, but did just update to the latest, April08. No change.

I wanted to setup my RAID on the marvell because that is where I had open SATA slots. I did just move my 3 drives to RAID onto the Intel Matrix ports. However, the 4th drive on there (in slot 0) is my OS drive. We got these MOBOs in Jan 2007 when they were brand new. At that time, the Intel sata port 0 was the only SATA port that you could boot off of without having random problems. Today I went into the BIOS and changed the sata setting from IDE to RAID to turn on the Intel RAID Bios Interface. I was able to make a RAID5 out of the three drives, leaving my OS drive as not part of the RAID.

Windows would boot to the splash screen, hang, and then boot back to the BIOS, in an endless loop.

I guess I could try moving my OS drive to the Marvell controller. Maybe that works now????

thanks

Let us know how it goes. Maybe give raid 10 a shot. Seems to work well for me.

Per an email from Intel support, the marvell controller does not support a RAID5, even though the latest Marvell GUI software will let you create a RAID5. Intel claims the Marvell GUI is for all different types of Marvell raid controllers, but the raid controller on this board will only support what you can create from the BIOS screen, (raid0, raid1, raid10).

I was able to put my OS drive on the marvell controller and create a 3 disk RAID5 on the Intel Matrix controller. Everything seems fine so far. For those running a RAID5 on the matrix controller, what is the more stable setting, to turn on the writeback cache or turn it off?

thanks

I would say that either setting is stable. I run with the caching enabled for better performance. Caveat is though that if there is a misstep in the read/write, data may be lost or corrupted. Generally with performance vs. redundancy is going to depend on the type of info you are trying to safeguard.

I have nothing but games, bookmarks and personal emails on my computer which, if lost is no biggie so I don't run EEC for most things save for my raid 10. However I will be running raid 0 asap. I just make sure to back up what I want to keep to DL DVD and let er fly!