Raid card

[failurbydesign]

Do raid cards support dvd/dvdrw drives? My issues is only one ide connector on this motherboard...which i have my dvd drive and a hard drive. But i need to setup the other dvdrw drive and another hd. With a raid card installed will the bios see the card and i can have my two hd's on that and boot without an issue?

 

[LeeJend]

The "RAID" cards are just an expansion IDE set with 1 or 2 additional ports (2 or 4 devices). They should connect up fine. BUT, you may have issues if you are trying to install the BOOT drive on the RAID card.

Look at the FAQs and customer reviews if you want to boot from the card.

Also, if they are in PCI slots vs PCI-e slots you might be bandwidth limited. A possible issue if you want top speed DVD burners to run at max.

 

[failurbydesign]

so a pci-e would be best..i just need my secondary dvd drive and secondary hard drive on it..ill use the one on the MB for the dvdrw and main hd

 

[fitz]

I think you are a bit confused as to what a RAID is.. RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks.. a RAID is a set of disks that are combined to create a single logical drive. A RAID card or necessary to do the logic (unless you are doing software RAID *shudder*)

What you are looking for is either a straight IDE card or a straight SATA card and yes, PCI-e would be better in terms of removing the bus as a bottleneck.

 

[LeeJend]

As usual newegg has a pile of them. They range from $15 for two ATA drives, PCI interface, no RAID options up to $400 for RAID, 4 ATA drives, SATA drives, PCI-e, etc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150410%20119340940&bop=And&Page=2

I did not see any for just ATA with PCI-e card slot connectors. So you have an option of ultra low cost or you can up the cost and start adding features like support for ATA and SATA, RAID, higher speed PCI-e card slots, etc. The price range is staggering.

These are mostly "Controller only" PCI, ATA133 cards. BTW get the 133, not just 100. I'm not sure your PCI slot will let you use the full speed but the price is the same. For that matter you can get RAID at the same price on several of the cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0410+119340940+1193412761+1193212548&name=IDE

 

[American Zombie]

You may be better off to put your hard drives on the SATA connectors and then place both optical drives on the IDE connector.

All you would need is an IDE to SATA adapter such as maybe this but then again it may be cheaper to just buy some SATA HD's.