Setting up sata raid 150

Just got my new board.....abit KV7-V.

It has onbaord sata raid 150. Can you set up raid with just one sata drive and no other hdd's?? If you can....can someone get me going here?? When I boot...after the bios scans, It comes up like how I've got it listed below...

Scan Devices, Please wait....
Raid
None Define
None Raid
Serial_Ch0 Master: ############(hd serial #)
Press < Tab > Key into User Window!


Ofcourse I hit the tab key, and then it goes into the raid, then it tells me something about the drive # or the raid # is wrong...or something to that effect!! But ayway...I can't access any of the features to setup the raid chipset stuff in the tab key!!

I'm COMPLETELY new to this raid thing....so please....bear with me!!

Thank You
Roger

 

I don't know what you think RAID is or what you are expecting it to do but I can tell you it's not what you think it is.

Put very simply RAID is used to join HD's together. This is the only function of RAID, it serves no other purpose. In otherwords you can't use it with just one HD.

Common uses of raid is to join 2 HD's into one. Then what happens is half the files are written on one HD and half on the other when it's in use. So in effect it looks like things are working twice as fast to the user since you get to max out the bandwidth of both HD's. Of course the draw back to this is, if something goes wrong with one HD then you lose everything since half the data was on one HD.

Another common use of RAID is to mirror files. Whatever you put on one HD goes onto the other HD automaticly. This is mainly used for backup purposes, just in case one HD goes you don't lose a thing. For people with more money it's quite common to see both of these methods in use using 4 HD's. SO you get double the speed and still remain fairly safe since you retain a backup at all times.

RAID also has other purposes but if you want to know more about it I suggest you read up about it. In all cases RAID always will work by making 2 or more HD's work together.

 

check for info in hardware section (thread sata blues)