InfiniteMac OSx86 - View Single Post - Will this hardware work well with installing Mac OS X?

lanceomni · 12-05-2008, 03:56 PM

I wouldn't hold your breath for the on-board raid. Despite being an on-board feature of the mobo it is most likely still considered a soft or fake raid in that your processor is doing the heavy lifting (just like software raids created in your OS). True hardware RAID controllers do the processing internally and do not farm the work out.

Quote:

RAID can involve significant computation when reading and writing information. With traditional "real" RAID hardware, a separate controller does this computation. In other cases the operating system or simpler and less expensive controllers require the host computer's processor to do the computing, which reduces the computer's performance on processor-intensive tasks (see "Software RAID" and "Fake RAID" below). Simpler RAID controllers may provide only levels 0 and 1, which require less processing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

I have an Asus board with "On-board RAID" I used it for scratch disk when I had XP installed and It worked great. OSX however isnt seeing it as an array. I was extremely disappointed that I could not use this feature as I wanted two dual boot OSX & XP and use it in RAID 0 for scratch disk. (I am sure if it worked it would have opened up a whole new can of worms.)

I still think this is strange for two reasons.
1. The controller sets up the raid prior the OS loading
2. I believe there are RAID controller cards for sale which are considered FAKE as in they do not do the heavy lifting.

That said I have not found a definitive answer as to if this issue is a driver related one or just due to OSX.