My (6 year old) motherboard has 4 PATA socket, 2 SATA socket, and one socket labelled "SATA RAID1". Since I (sadly) have 4 PATA devices (including dvd-r), 2 SATA hard drives, and have just bought another SATA SSD drive, can I plug it into the "SATA RAID1" socket?
If not, what to do? Buy an additional SATA controller?
EDIT More info: I'm running XP Pro, and intend to replace one of the PATA drives (200Gb) which I'm currently booting off, with the SSD (60Gb)
EDIT 2: Further info, originally in a self-answer:
I plugged it in, but Windows didn't see it (even in Computer Management). In BIOS, the drive doesn't show up under the main list of IDE and SATA drives. It does show up in a special "SATA RAID" section, so I know it's physically detected, but what I'm trying to do doesn't seem possible.
The motherboard is an ASUS M2V.
(Final resolution: after installing Marvell's SATA driver, it suddenly showed up in Windows, even without rebooting, and all is well.).
Best Answer
With current Intel chipsets that have included RAID, I normally expect drives to be in AHCI mode even with RAID enabled until the drive is manually added to a RAID volume. I'm not certain how your motherboard/controller manages it.
In the event that it actually won't let you use a drive on a 'RAID' port as a normal AHCI drive, you should try installing the SATA drivers provided by ASUS here. It could be a 'FakeRaid' port, which would require the OS to have the appropriate drivers before RAID works.
And yes, single drive RAID is possible. Not normally done, since it provides absolutely no advantages over AHCI, but if your motherboard demands drives on that port to be in a RAID array, it is possible.
Possibly relevant is this:
He wanted to install an OS on the RAID drive.
Advice given:
Final result: