If you were to set up a RAID array of say 6 SATA Hardisks (SATA 3.0Gb), you would obviously run out of ports on the motherboard chipset. Would you need to use a separate PCI RAID Controller Card. If So ia this poaaible: Can you utilise the 2 SATA ports on the motherboard and use the 4 ports on the RAID controller card to set up the full RAID array. Normally, motherboards have only 2 SATA ports and raid controller cards have 4. Would this work in practice? For win xp install; obviously first you would connect the motherboard hard drives and install the floppy drivers, then connect the PCI controller and install its drivers. If this integration of motherboard and Controller card doesn't work would you need to buy a higher capacity (ports) controller card, so that you can connect all the Hardisks to it, despite motherboard having 2 ports?
Depends on how many SATA ports are on the motherboard. Most new boards have at least 4, and many mid- to high-end motherboards feature additional SATA controllers that add 2-4 more SATA ports. That would depend on the controller, but, generally, no. When set in RAID mode, you would need to feed the XP install drivers in the first stage of the setup (when it says 'Press F6 to Install Storage/RAID Controllers'---or something along those lines) if you'll be installing XP onto the array. If not, then what you stated would work just fine. However, you can leave the card in and just not install drivers. If that's what you needed, yes. Again, that depends on the motherboard you have, as I noted earlier.
If RAID is of most importance to you, you should consider a SCSI based solution. You can chain 7 devices on one SCSI chain.
