Building Allenstein-Three hard drive setup ?

[Ross H]

Putting together an Allenstein...

I want three hard drives on my Allenstein. The ASUS mother board came with two red, thin Serial ATA cables with small black ends. I have plugged them into my primary and secondary plugs on the motherboard for the system and audio drive.

I want my third hard drive for BFD (drum program) and other soft synths at a later date. I will need to purchase another serial ATA cable, but from there how do I set up drive 3 on the mother board as well as the bios and xp.

Thanks in advance,

Ross

Rackmount case
ASUS kv8 deluxe
AMD 64 3400
Crucial 2 gigs ram
WD 10,000 rpm raptor - Audio
WD 10,000 rpm raptor - Soft synths
WD 7200 rpm - system
Maxtor 7200 rpm external - backup/transport
DVD burner
CD burner
Floppy
Matrox 550 dual video
Enermax 470 watt "noisetaker" PS
Wireless Mouse / Keyboard

[Ross H]

Checking back...

Looking at the motherboard, there is the ata 1 and ata 2 which is where the system and audio are connected. The other two open ata connections on the motherboard are stated as for Raid setups (primary/secondary) in the manual. Can I use one of those raid connectors for the third drive?

Ross

[K.B.]

Not sure I've followed you, but you shouldn't mix hard drives and CD / DVD drives on the same ATA. There is no problem with having two hard drives on the same ATA. Impossible to say what your board is capable of without looking at the manual (you've done that of course?). Once you have everything up and running with 2 hard drives, try putting the third drive in the RAID ATA slot and see what happens. Failing that, do what everyone else does, and make the third drive external, preferably firewire.

Many folk here will tell you you don't need a third drive.

Or you could get a fourth drive and go RAID. Probably cheaper than buying an external.

Or even copy my first PT setup. One drive for system & PT drive, and two others in a RAID setup for data. Go for RAID 1.

So much choice. What to do, eh?

Search the DUC above. It's all there.

[Ross H]

Thanks so much for the reply. I have searched extensively and found a bit more but here is where I am.

I have the DVD/CD on the ide...so it isn't at all connected to any ata.

I would like one drive for system, one drive for audio, and one drive for BFD (drum program that REALLY needs it's own drive).

All three drives I purchased are SATA. It appears from researching the DUC that I put one on the sata 1 (system) one on sata 2 (audio) and one on the sata primary connector/raid connector but I set up the raid in bios as raid 1+0.

OR....I now through my searching am very interested in two hard drives for running session at higher rates 48, 96 etc. I could use my external that I already have for BFD.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

ASUS kv8 deluxe
amd 3400 64

Ross

[K.B.]

I'd purchase a fourth drive, and run two identical drives in the RAID slots as RAID 1. Put your audio on this. This records to two drives identical information, so if one goes down, you automatically have everything backed up, and you also benefit from getting faster data speeds on playback since the system is accessing both drives simultaneously.