need more than 4 EIDE channels??

C

Cooperman

Guest
Here is my question.
From my spec you can see that i am using all 4 IDE channels on my mobo. 2 x 80GB HDD's, 1 CDRW + 1 DVD.

I would like to add a DVD Rewriter and possibly another hard drive for storage but i do not want to remove my existing HDD's CDRW and DVD.
Is it possible for me to do this and if so how would i go about it?

A friend of mine said i could get an ATA controller card to fit in my PCI slot which will give me a further 4 EIDE channels. Is this correct and if so how do i configure my setup so that i can use 6 or 8 channels.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Actually, it's pretty easy. The card should have directions but here goes:

Just install the controller card into a free PCI slot and reboot (no drives attached yet).

When windows comes up it should find new hardware or windows may have a driver that works. Either way, I suggest using the driver the card comes with. Once the driver is installed, shut down.

Add your harddrives to the controller card. I think most add-in cards are meant for harddrives only (no CDROMS) so you may have to shift stuff around a bit so your CDROMS are on the mobo IDE ports.

Like I said, usually the card comes with instructions on how to install it.

Note: If you are going to add 2 more storage devices on top of the 4 you have already, you might want to make sure your power supply is up to the task.
 
Originally posted by scriptasylum
Actually, it's pretty easy. The card should have directions but here goes:

Just install the controller card into a free PCI slot and reboot (no drives attached yet).

When windows comes up it should find new hardware or windows may have a driver that works. Either way, I suggest using the driver the card comes with. Once the driver is installed, shut down.

Add your harddrives to the controller card. I think most add-in cards are meant for harddrives only (no CDROMS) so you may have to shift stuff around a bit so your CDROMS are on the mobo IDE ports.

Like I said, usually the card comes with instructions on how to install it.

Note: If you are going to add 2 more storage devices on top of the 4 you have already, you might want to make sure your power supply is up to the task.

I concur...

RAID controller cards allow you to add hard drives ONLY... therefore use your onboard ide channels to add atapi devices and move all but your primary hdd to the raid card... that way you can have upto 3 atapi (four even but I would prefer to leave my primary hdd on the primary ide channel )
 
if you have a raid motherboard just use them for the hdd's wich will leave you with 4 ide free. In this config, you will be able to use 4 hdd's and 4 cd devices
 
Originally posted by Sazar
four even but I would prefer to leave my primary hdd on the primary ide channel )
since your PCI slots and IDE ports are run through the south bridge, going from one to the other would not loose any performance. However i have not seen any benchmarks, that is all theory. thought you might like to know.
 
wait guys! his board has built-in raid! is it that hard to see?

cooperman, your board has 4 channels... each can have 2 devices... so you can have up to 8 total. no need to buy anything at all.

you should use IDE1 and IDE2 for your optical drives (dvd, burner, etc)... and IDE3 and IDE4 (raid) should be used for your harddrives.
 
Yep ATA controller cards will also do the job just no RAID.
Best cards are from Promise or Highpoint

I got a RAID mobo, and two hard drives and CDRW and DVD all as Master drive setting, nice and stable. Also my CDs dont seem to get screwed up as the drive aint sharing with anything else.
 
Taurus,
I thought that i could only use channels 3 and 4 for raid purposes only ie mirroring.
would i have to have my primary hdd on channel 1 or 2 and be able to use other hdd's on channels 3 & 4 as normal hdd's and not raid.

Here is an example can i have the following combination bearing in mind I do not want to use Raid just have extra Hdd's as storage

Channel 1 Primary CDRW & Secondary DVD
Channel 2 Primary DVDRW & Secondary CDRW
Channel 3 Primary Master HDD with Win XP (Not Raid) & Secondary HDD (Not Raid)
Channel 4 Primary HDD (Not Raid) & Secondary HDD (Not Raid)
 
cooperman... that setup is fine. raid controllers can just be used as extra ide channels. the whole raid thing is an option. i have a dvd, cdrw, and 3 harddrives (without a raid array) on my board.

the only thing i'd change with your proposed setup is i'd move the dvdrw as master and dvdrom as slave on the same channel... they're both likely ata66 and it's good to have devices on the same channel to have the same interface speed. but if your dvdrom is ata33, then don't worry about it; what you have there is perfect.
 
And to add a note on RAID only use it if you have or are buying the same size hard drive(s) or else it will default to the samllest one. and depending on which RAID config.(s) your board supports then you won't need mirroring. Of course it's not always the best option. So I think what you and taures have said would be your best bet..
 
Posted by taurus
cooperman... that setup is fine. raid controllers can just be used as extra ide channels. the whole raid thing is an option. i have a dvd, cdrw, and 3 harddrives (without a raid array) on my board.

[\QUOTE]

Tried that and when i tryied to install windows it said that it found no nard disks. Could i use them for the cd drives??
 
Go SCSI that's how I solve the lack of IDE and it is faster.
 
just slap it on the IDE0 and install, after that place it on the RAID controller and have it boot from there. Never tried it b4 but if thats the way you want to have your box set up try it. if not use a RAID config. IMO or maybe there is a setting in BIOS you missed.
 
Go SCSI that's how I solve the lack of IDE and it is faster
if you do SCSI config. Make sure you do a SCSI 3 it's the fastest one now(of course you would have to buy new HDD....
 
"And to add a note on RAID only use it if you have or are buying the same size hard drive(s) or else it will default to the samllest one. and depending on which RAID config.(s) your board supports then you won't need mirroring. Of course it's not always the best option. So I think what you and taures have said would be your best bet.." -vdubvr6


not necessarily true. on most raid controllers you can use spanning mode which will make whatever drives you select into one large drive by adding them in a serial fashion (not parallel like raid 0)
 
I don't know what you are talking about...but if it were to make them one BIG drive it(the controller) would have to add up all the drives,.. in order to do that in needs the binary size of the drives and it will take the smallest one and make the rest of the drives the same size, so if you had 2 x 20gig drives(dinary to make things easy) it would make it one 40gig drive. now if you had a 20gig and a 10gig it would make it a 20gig drive and not a 30gig. so yes it would work but it would not be wise. you would lose disk space. and that does not just go for RAID0 it goes for RAID1, 5, 10, 50....etc. I've never heard of a RAID controller on a mobo. with these capabilities.

and if there is please show me a link or somthing. I would be intrested to know so i could share with people I work with. thx:D
 
tried it but failed. it is an onboard if that makes a diffrence.
 
trying to boot ffom ide 2. the optionas either bot from ide 0,1,2,or 3 and with onboard raid device enable or disabled. the motherboard is a MSi K7T266 R

Webpage

Pls can you help.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back