P4P800-E and installing 137+ hard drives w/o partitions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Martin Hirsch
  • Start date Start date
M

Martin Hirsch

Hi

I have two Maxtor ATA133 160mb drives that I would like to install on the
promise raid controller on my P4P800-E since it supports ATA133.

My questions are:

Can the promise raid controller be used as the bootable / standard two disk
controller without RAID?

How to install XP (pre SP1 version) and be able to access over 137 the
easiest way. I don't want partitions> ( I have the card that came with the
HD with the onboard bios support but the MB supports it so I don't want to
use the card.)

Would it be easy to use the Maxtor controller card and have the HD's hooked
up to it then install XP and then SP1 then move the HD's to the onboard
controller??

Or would it be easier to format the drive on another computer to 160mb and
move it into the new computer and then install XP and then update to SP1,
again I don't want partitions?

Thanks, Martin

BTW. I'm currently using this Maxtor card with a 160 Maxtor on a P4B533-E. I
have XP Pro with SP1 one installed and assumed I have OS support for the
160mb drives. I checked my ATAPI.SYS version per MS website and I don't have
the most current version that supports LBA. At this time it does not matter
since I'm using the bios on the Maxtor controller card. I thought SP1
updates this file for support??
 
During the setup of pre XP (with out SP1) to the max partition size of
127gb, after the os is up and running install SP1 or 2 and then aquire a
copy of Partiion Magic 8 and expand the rest of the unused space.
 
From memory I don't think the raid controller is bootable, best not to
anyway unless you have to. Personally I would not raid unless you ready need
the speed anyway (the increase will not really be that much).
 
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