point to using onboard Promise ATA100?

[Mr. K]

Hello,

I'm using an Asus A7V133 (KT133 chipset) with an onboard Promise ATA100 controller in addition to the standard primary/secondary IDE channels.

If I have one hard drive on the primary IDE and one optical drive on the secondary IDE, is there any point in switching the hard drive to use the Promise controller? Will it be faster? The Promise controller adds ten seconds to my boot time while it searches for devices, but if the standard IDE channel offers the same speed then there's no point in using the Promise controller. The standard IDE channel offers the same ATA100 speed, doesn't it? (XP says my hard drive--currently on the primary IDE channel--is using Ultra DMA mode 5, so I assume that transaltes to UDMA-100.)

I searched http://a7vtroubleshooting.com/ for an answer, but I only found out how to make use of the Promise controller; I couldn't find anything on whether it's faster than the standard IDE channel.

My motherboard: http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A7V133

Thanks for your time...

 

[LeeJend]

If you only have one HD and one CD there is no point in using the Promise.

Your IDE0 can handle 2 HD's at the speed of whichever is slower. Don't put a HD and CD on the same IDE channel. The CD limits that channels throughput. Keep IDE1 for CD, DVD, Burner, etc.

If you go to a three hard drives then there is a data transfer speed advantage to using the Promise but then like you said you eat the extra time it takes to load the RAID functions at boot.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by LeeJend
If you only have one HD and one CD there is no point in using the Promise.

Your IDE0 can handle 2 HD's at the speed of whichever is slower. Don't put a HD and CD on the same IDE channel. The CD limits that channels throughput. Keep IDE1 for CD, DVD, Burner, etc.

If you go to a three hard drives then there is a data transfer speed advantage to using the Promise but then like you said you eat the extra time it takes to load the RAID functions at boot.

yes... that is quite right

controller cards allow for expandability... if it is a built in feature... you should be able to disable it in the bios to conserve resources... if its an addon card... don't fret

 

[Taurus]

just fyi, Mr. K... your A7V133 is based on the KT133A chipset... not KT133. they're different.

and stick with the non-raid channels unless you get more drives later.

 

[NetRyder]

If you're using just one HDD and one optical drive, just use the onboard IDE controller. The controller card would be useful if you had more than 4 drives in all or if your onboard controller was slower.