PCI raid card.

botheredbothered Manchester UK
edited March 2004 in Hardware
I have three HDDs, a CDROM and a CD writer. Due to my upgrade I no longer have the CDROM. If I get a raid card can I put each drive on its own channel? Do I just set each to master or is it more complicated?
And could anybody suggest a decent card?

Comments

  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited March 2004
    bothered wrote:
    I have three HDDs, a CDROM and a CD writer. Due to my upgrade I no longer have the CDROM. If I get a raid card can I put each drive on its own channel? Do I just set each to master or is it more complicated?
    And could anybody suggest a decent card?


    Yes, each HD can be it's own channel if you have a 4 channel RAID card.

    I recommend the FastTrax from Promise, they are great raid cards and not overly expensive.

    Dexter...
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Are you going to raid the HD's or just run them independently??? If you are just wanting extra IDE ports you could same some dough and get an IDE card. For relatively low cost you can get High Point or LSI made cards that will do vey well.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited March 2004
    Either would work. Get the RAID for expandibility/upgradability.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    You can check prices at newegg. (Link goes to Hard Drive Controllers/RAID Cards page).

    Cheapest I saw was $19 for non-raid. I wouldn't get hung up about the difference between ATA-100 and ATA-133, though if there was little difference in price you might as well get the ATA-133.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited March 2004
    I just want to run them independantly for the monent, I'm all for future proofing though so it'll probably be a raid card.

    Edit, fast track 100, £62+, Aria.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    Be careful about what RAID card you get, Bothered. Some of them will NOT support JBOD (just a bunch of disks) setups, like the onboard RAID on my MSI Pro266TD Master-LR. PCI ATA-133 (non-RAID) cards are very inexpensive (<$30), so I'd just get one, and then if you need RAID later, get a RAID card. But you have a NF7-S, which has onboard SATA RAID anyhow, so...
  • NecropolisNecropolis Hawarden, Wales Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Bothered, didnt you get an NF7-S? If so just throw the serial-ata/ide adapter onto one of your hard drives and then you can put your cd-rom on without having to buy a raid card. Should save you a few quid.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited March 2004
    What serial ata/ide adapter is that? Did I get one with the board? To be honest I had so much messing around, two trips to aria, strip down, re build, reinstall windows etc it all took 12 hours and I've still stuff in the Abit box I've not looked at yet. I'm at work at the moment, been here for 15 hours and one more to go! (covering somebody who didn't turn up) I'm knackered but I'll look when I get in.

    PS, will the nf7s take a XP3000? I will be getting one next week if it will. (and another 512Mb RAM) Then we'll see some folding!
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    bothered wrote:
    What serial ata/ide adapter is that? Did I get one with the board?...
    See picture - it's built-in, hook up SATA cable where I've marked in red.

    PS, will the nf7s take a XP3000? I will be getting one next week if it will. (and another 512Mb RAM) Then we'll see some folding!
    Ought to be just fine - you can handle everything up to the 400MHz FSB. Watch the points roll in!
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2004
    I work now with IDE raid cards all day long and after extensive testing... Promise sucks butt. They are slow to boot and lock up when trying to do heavy system usage while rebuilding a raid. We have found through testing that 3ware 2 and 4 channel cards are far superior. We test our systems by pulling a drive and start a rebuild then turn on our burn in software which tests the whole system at the same time. 100% cpu usage, writes to disk, test network and sound, etc..

    To me its a much better product.

    Gobbles
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2004
    they also cost a hell of alot more....


    Gobbles
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited March 2004
    Lots of good info here guys, thanks.

    Prof, it's the same board but SATA1 and 2 are small 7 pin male plugs, how do I connect an IDE cable to them?
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    Bothered, there's a little adapter dongle in the box the motherboard came in that has a female IDE connector on one end, and a male SATA connector & floppy power connectors on the other end. Plug that into a hard drive, with the drive set to master, plug a SATA cable into it and into the motherboard, and plug a floppy power lead into it (plus the regular 4 pin power connector for the drive), and it will adapt a PATA hard drive to SATA.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    That's an added bonus of SATA - the cable is pencil-thin, instead of a big fat ribbon cable to block airflow. :thumbsup:
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited March 2004
    Wow! I just searched the table where I rebuilt the PC, it's still full of box's and bits, and found a small bag I hadn't seen before. IT'S THE ADAPTER! I didn't know it was there. I'll use that for now, Thanks guys. It may have got thrown out if you hadn't told me about it.
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