Hello everyone,
I am not an advanced user and my knowledge in modding is not so good, but I have registered at these forums to seek a method to enable RAID on an xps m1530’s PM965 Chipset; my motherboard only offers IDE & AHCI options at BIOS setup, having an ICH8M (not ICH8M-E) I/O Controlller Hub, and this has led me to search for bios modification (?) or some form of utility (?) to enable RAID support.
The end result I am intending to achieve is a BIOS-Raid 0 configuration on 2 x physical SATA HDDs, to be used with Intel’s RST Version 10.1.0.1008 as the controller.
Any help or guidance on how to go about this would be much appreciated.
Regards
@ Padawan:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
I am sorry, but I cannot help you with this, because it would require a modification of the system BIOS modules.
If you want to run 2 HDDs/SSDs as RAID0 array, you can create a "Software RAID" from within running Windows.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Alright, thanks for the reply Fernando
No it’s ok, I am not looking to set up software raid. Btw. may I ask, to the best of ur knowledge, is it still possible for me to set up an internal 2-disk hardware raid if I obtain an expresscard 54/34 with firmware as the dedicated raid controller? (ie. my BIOS would still have only IDE/AHCI as the only 2 supported options). Will it work? I’m not interested in setting external raid by means of USB 3.0.
So it would mean I won’t go through Intel RST in that case.
Hi there!
You would have to connect the hard drives to the expresscard controller, so it would be an external solution.
The drives you want to use in a RAID volume must always be connected to the RAID controller.
You can’t use the drives connected to an AHCI controller for a RAID maintained by another controller.
The expresscard itself is external equipment, as it is removable…
There are 3 options:
- use a software raid for the internal drives (Windows dynamic disks, Linux LVM,…)
- use external drives with an expresscard adapter
- buy another laptop that features raid option
Best regards,
Mr nUUb
Oh I c what u mean about the raid controller connection. So that plan I will discontinue. Yes, I do intend to buy another pc with RAID support, but even so I would still want to attempt RAID on this one as well.
Is it possible for my system to gain bios raid support by flashing a modded bios?
It may be possible to flash such modded BIOS, but the chance to brick the mainboard by doing it are higher than 90%.
Furthermore I know nobody, who will try such BIOS modification.
I see. Well until someone finds a better way, I will continue to read more of your articles to gain a better knowledge on the various systems. Your site is very informative.