Device Cable Configuration for Raid?

[Spinman]

I know back in the old days - it was important to properly install ATA devices to obtain max data transfer speeds.

Wondering if the setup for motherboard RAID drives would run better if I installed the drives in a particular order - or is it inmaterial? I'd rather keep matching drives on the same controller if it won't degrade performance...

Gigabyte 8IEXP running hacked full raid with onboard Promise 20276 chip

Raid Drive A Controller 1 Channel 1

Raid Drive A Controller 1 Channel 2

Raid Drive B Controller 2 Channel 1

Raid Drive B Controller 2 Channel 2

- or -

Raid Drive A Controller 1 Channel 1

Raid Drive B Controller 1 Channel 2

Raid Drive A Controller 2 Channel 1

Raid Drive B Controller 2 Channel 2

Because Raid Drive A will write 2 drives - is it better to send the two signals on the same controller or on different controllers? Is the signal send to the two devices simultaneously or sequentually? If simultaneously - then in my mind, it would make sense to use different controllers. If sequentually - then it should not matter.

I searched Promise literature, but never saw the issue addressed - all they say is hook up the drives and then establish the array in the setup utility.

[ripken204]

what type of raid are you setting up. is it one raid for all 4 drives or 2 separate raids for 2 drives?

[allen2]

For ata raid the best settings are only one drive by cable and of course set as master. If i understood correctly, you're trying to set up 2 raid (0 or 1) with 2 drives for each and on only 2 ata ports. You could choose any settings when you'll copy data from raid to another, performances will go down a lot as the bw will be shared on both ATA ports for the two raid array in both config.