Is it possible to use this connexion for a single drive to b

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 4:55 am

I would like to add a 5th drive to my setup, it’s an old IDE 13.5 GB IBM drive, but quite fast and reliable, so useful for backups.

I have reached the 4 normal drives that my MOBO Asus P4PE allows. What I want is using the RAID connection, if possible, to se this drive.

I am not interested in Raid 0 nor in Raid 1, I would like to use this connexion as a normal IDE drive.

Question: Is it possible to use this connexion for a single drive to behave as an ordinary IDE drive?

Cheers

arela · Post by **arela** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 1:47 pm

hi
i think 4 is the limit, so i suggest you
a) swapp drive when you are backking up
or
b) get a network, or connect two pc's with a "twisted" cable. This could be a old pc.
c)maybe, and maybe you could use more than 4 drives if you use s-ata for 1 or 2 discs??
d) borrow one of my free ide ports

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: arela on 2005-11-04 13:48 ]</font>

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 3:32 pm

Hello there…

Of course, it had to be a fellow P4PE user!

The MOBO manual states that the board has:

Primary IDE equivalent to two drives
Secondary IDE equivalent to two drives
They are dual-channel bus master IDE connectors and support Ultra DMA

Of course, I use only two IDE drives, as I have a CD lector, and a DVD writer using one of the IDE connexions.

Then we have the SATA connexions of course, where I have attached two SATA drives.

Finally, there it is, the RAID Ultra ATA connector. The manual states that this connector supports Ultra ATA HD set to Master mode.

The it comes what makes me think it is possible, but I actually don’t totally understand what they say: This connector supports either RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration though the onboard Promise PDC20376 controller. You can use the RAID feature to set up a disk array configuration and to support additional IDE devices.

I have done quite a search in Google with no success, what do you think? Cheers

Thank you for your ideas Arela, but this is the only applicable for me right now.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 4:13 pm

There are PCI-based IDE controller cards, should be pretty cheap, in the 10-15$ range. It'll site on the same bus as the CW cards, but shouldn't be a problem if the drive is only accessed for backup and not during the course of recording/audio-work.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 6:06 pm

That's a cool idea, simple, cheap and effective.

Now, forgive my stubbornness, as I still would like to find out if this Raid connexion can or not be used.

Cheers.

arela · Post by **arela** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:47 pm

and
e) ahh i forgot this!

symbiote:
There are PCI-based IDE controller cards.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 10:30 am

There is a way for me to find out what this Raid can or can't do, and is installing the drive and drivers... this is what I'm going to do. I don't think there is any danger for the system for not having two drives instead of one, the worst I spect is for it to gime me some herror messages.

I am reinstaling everything, so it is perhaps a good moment.

Post by **garyb** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:02 am

since it's a promise controller, it's probably tacked onto the pci bus. it'll also probably involve an additional irq. why in the world do you really need two cd drives? the dvd drive will read and write cds, no? if not, one that will is like, $50....how about a drive caddy? swapping drives would be easy that way...or just an external drive for storage.

her's a usb2-ide cable that you can plug in to any ide drive(including the cd or dvd drive you have) for $17.....
http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDetail. ... p:10502660