HDD and CD connections

[Mike Emerson]

Hi guys and gals, thanx for the brilliant info regularly posted.
I have just completed my new system;
Athlon 1600XP
ASUS A7V266-E mobo
512mb DDR ram
40gb Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm hdd (system)
80gb Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm hdd (audio)
CD-RW
DVD

I have connected all the drives with Ultra DMA 66 (80 way) cables.
Promise connector 1 on the mobo connects to hdd 1 (system)as master, and CD-RW as slave.
Promise connector 2 on the mobo connects to hdd 2 (audio) as master, and dvd as slave.

Is this the best way to connect, or should I put the 2 hard drives on one controller, and the CD and DVD on the second?

All advice appreciated.
Cheers
Mike [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Allen Hallada]

Mike,
Connect your Hard drives to the Promise controllers, each to their own port with the system drive on port A and the audio drive on port B. Make sure you use the two ATA100 cables for this if you are running ATA100 drives.
Hook your CDRW and DVD to the remaining IDE channels (not the Promise controller). You may need more cables for this.
In Bios, include SCSI in the boot sequence under floppy and CD. That should do it.
Print your IRQ settings when you are done and post them so that others can help you configure it for best performance.
Good luck.
Allen [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Mike Emerson]

Thanks Allen,
I've just realised a big mistake. I thought I had the drives in the promise slots, but they were the ide slots. My ASUS A7V266-E does not have additional promise connections - although it has space for them.
WARNING FOR YOUNG PLAYERS: If you are buying this motherboard, make sure you get the one that is raid enabled, as it has the 2 promise ports that Allen is referring to. The base vanilla A7V266-E only has 2 ide connections. Oh well - there goes another $300 (Australian dollars).
Mike Emerson

[Allen Hallada]

Mike,
That is a bummer. I didn't even realize that the Promise controller was an option on this motherboard until I checked today. Thanks for the heads up. I'd send yours back for the other version. Got that money back guarantee? Hope so.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[sonic penguin]

Please excuse my very green question, but what exactly are "PROMISE" ports? Do they only occur on RAID mobos? How do they differ from IDE ports? I'm purchasing a Gigabyte GA-7DXR board, but did so on recommendation only--I'm not even sure how to run a RAID--I was only concerned with compatibility with DDR memory and support for ATA-100 Seagate Barracuda drives.

Thanks for all the great subjects and info!

-SP

[king mob]

Promise is a brandname of RAID controller that comes on some RAID motherboards. So they are just separate IDE ports exclusively for the RAID system.

[JMS40]

Sorry, that is incorrect. Promise is a brand name for an IDE controller... not necessarily RAID, and available both separately as a PCI card and Onboard some motherboards. Outside of our musical world, most folks use separate PCI card IDE controllers, such as Promise, to allow an older system to utilize ATA-66 and 100 drives to their fullest intended potential. <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by king mob:
Promise is a brandname of RAID controller that comes on some RAID motherboards. So they are just separate IDE ports exclusively for the RAID system.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[VividMax]

are the promise controllers on the AsusA7V266-E m\board the blue ports? just wondering as i'm about to buy one.
thanx

[Allen Hallada]

The Promise channels are the two by themselves. The IDE channels are next to the Floppy port.
You can use these as a RAID setup or as ATA100 controllers. Best to stick with the ATA100 controller setup at this point. I haven't heard of anyone getting better results with Digi by hooking up a RAID 0 configuration yet. Better in my opinion to have two separate hard drives, than one big hard drive partitioned. If one of those hard drives fails in a RAID 0 setup, they both go down, where the ATA100 setup they are independent of each other. Just use your ATA100 cables to hook the hard drives to the Promise controllers as I mentioned above and remember to setup SCSI in your bios as a boot option under floppy and CD.
Allen [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[G.roots]

Allen,

When hooking up the hard drives to the Promise controller, should I set one to master and the other to slave? I would think that since they are each on thier own Promise port, each can be set to Master. I am still having problems with winME crashing and hanging up during the install.

Currently, I have one hard drive (system) connected to the primary ide port and the other (Audio) drive connected to one Promise port. I have Promise/SCSI enabled in the Bios. Is this incorrect? Maybe I should use only the Promise ports regardless of the "Primary IDE" port.