PCI IDE controller card suggestions?

[Bob]

I've got an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, which has on-board RAID. I am
using a Lumberjack "hacked" BIOS, which allows me to use the RAID IDE
ports as if they are just additional IDE ports (non-RAID). I've got a
lot of IDE devices (4 hard disks and 2 CD ROMs) so I need the extra IDE
ports.

Recently, I have been having a problem where whichever hard disk that
is attached to one of the RAID IDE ports is not recognized by the BIOS,
and consequently Win XP can't see it either. I'm thinking that the
RAID IDE ports on the motherboard are starting to intermittently fail
for some reason, and was thinking of buying a PCI IDE controller to
hook up a few of my disks to instead of attaching them to the RAID
ports on my m/b. I've used Promise IDE controller cards in the past on
my old PC and had had good luck with them. I see they have the
Ultra133 TX2 model now which I am looking at and the price seems to be
right at less than $50. Any comments on it and/or other
recommendations?

Thanks!

 

[Arno Wagner]

I've got an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, which has on-board RAID. I am
using a Lumberjack "hacked" BIOS, which allows me to use the RAID IDE
ports as if they are just additional IDE ports (non-RAID). I've got a
lot of IDE devices (4 hard disks and 2 CD ROMs) so I need the extra IDE
ports.

Recently, I have been having a problem where whichever hard disk that
is attached to one of the RAID IDE ports is not recognized by the BIOS,
and consequently Win XP can't see it either. I'm thinking that the
RAID IDE ports on the motherboard are starting to intermittently fail
for some reason, and was thinking of buying a PCI IDE controller to
hook up a few of my disks to instead of attaching them to the RAID
ports on my m/b.

This is potentially something else. About the only thing to
make semiconductors fail prematurely is heat. They have around
30 years life-expectancy at 25C. If the controller chip is
not hot to the touch, you might have some other problem.

I've used Promise IDE controller cards in the past on
my old PC and had had good luck with them. I see they have the
Ultra133 TX2 model now which I am looking at and the price seems to be
right at less than $50. Any comments on it and/or other
recommendations?

I had good erperiences with both Ultra100tx2 and Ultra133tx2 under
Linux. Never used them under Windows.

Arno

 

[Mark]

I've got an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, which has on-board RAID. I am
using a Lumberjack "hacked" BIOS, which allows me to use the RAID IDE
ports as if they are just additional IDE ports (non-RAID). I've got a
lot of IDE devices (4 hard disks and 2 CD ROMs) so I need the extra IDE
ports.

Recently, I have been having a problem where whichever hard disk that
is attached to one of the RAID IDE ports is not recognized by the BIOS,
and consequently Win XP can't see it either. I'm thinking that the
RAID IDE ports on the motherboard are starting to intermittently fail
for some reason, and was thinking of buying a PCI IDE controller to
hook up a few of my disks to instead of attaching them to the RAID
ports on my m/b. I've used Promise IDE controller cards in the past on
my old PC and had had good luck with them. I see they have the
Ultra133 TX2 model now which I am looking at and the price seems to be
right at less than $50. Any comments on it and/or other
recommendations?

The Ultra133 TX2 (I have the Maxtor equivalent card) works fine under
XP but doesn't support ATAPI devices so you'll need to work around
that problem. Make sure you d/l the latest firmware and drivers.

Incidentally the Windows Event monitor posts endless warnings about
the Ultra device having "out of date firmware" (there's none newer
than what I'm using) but it seems to work just fine.

HTH

Mark

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I've used Promise IDE controller cards in the past on
my old PC and had had good luck with them. I see they have the
Ultra133 TX2 model now which I am looking at and the price seems to be
right at less than $50. Any comments on it and/or other
recommendations?

I've been using a PCI IDE controller card by SIIG for about 3 years,
and I've had to problems with it. Here are the specs:
http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=103&pid=437

You can get them for a little over $40:
http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buyer/OutPDir.jsp?search=SC-PE4B12&node=0&x=0&y=0

*TimDaniels*

 

[Curious George]

I've got an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, which has on-board RAID. I am
using a Lumberjack "hacked" BIOS, which allows me to use the RAID IDE
ports as if they are just additional IDE ports (non-RAID). I've got a
lot of IDE devices (4 hard disks and 2 CD ROMs) so I need the extra IDE
ports.

A very weird & poor design if you need a hack to see disks as JBOD on
a "raid controller" IMO

Recently, I have been having a problem where whichever hard disk that
is attached to one of the RAID IDE ports is not recognized by the BIOS,
and consequently Win XP can't see it either. I'm thinking that the
RAID IDE ports on the motherboard are starting to intermittently fail
for some reason, and was thinking of buying a PCI IDE controller to
hook up a few of my disks to instead of attaching them to the RAID
ports on my m/b.

you sure the hack is OK & not creating the flakiness? As Arno said
heat may be the cause but not just on the controller IMHO. Yes the
usual suspects like power & cooling should get looked at. However I'm
still suspicious of this ASUS product and the hack.

I've used Promise IDE controller cards in the past on
my old PC and had had good luck with them. I see they have the
Ultra133 TX2 model now which I am looking at and the price seems to be
right at less than $50. Any comments on it and/or other
recommendations?

Thanks!

Promise seems to disagree with Mark; they claim this cards can indeed
support ATAPI peripherals - I don't use it so can't tell you how well.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

A very weird & poor design if you need a hack to see disks as JBOD on
a "raid controller" IMO

Actually, since JBOD is a feature of RAID controllers you throw that
feature away along with the RAID features.

you sure the hack is OK & not creating the flakiness? As Arno said
heat may be the cause but not just on the controller IMHO. Yes the
usual suspects like power & cooling should get looked at. However I'm
still suspicious of this ASUS product and the hack.


Promise seems to disagree with Mark; they claim this cards can indeed
support ATAPI peripherals - I don't use it so can't tell you how well.

They finally added the necessary ATAPI commands in the driver for the
TX2 products. They don't restrict it to Windows anymore so supposedly
that should work now in DOS as well for the 133TX2 (but not the 100).

 

[Mark]

[snip]

Promise seems to disagree with Mark; they claim this cards can indeed
support ATAPI peripherals - I don't use it so can't tell you how well.

The Maxtor users guide (OEM Promise) says only for ATAPI devices
supportive of UDMA 66 and above, else if working correctly leave them
on existing controllers

 

[Curious George]

Actually, since JBOD is a feature of RAID controllers you throw that
feature away along with the RAID features.

You are quite right that JBOD i.e. "spanning" will be lost. I was
really referring to "single disk JBOD" i.e. non-raid/ unspanned on a
raid controller - a configuration whose terminology is conflicting &
not really standardized.

He could rule out my suspicions by reflashing with a supported BIOS
and span 2-4 of the HDDs and see what happens. It makes more sense to
me to simply face that the controller he is hoping to salvage is
neither a good raid controller nor a good vanilla ATA controller - &
to stop wasting time & drop $10-20USD or equivalent on what will
actually get the job done.

They finally added the necessary ATAPI commands in the driver for the
TX2 products. They don't restrict it to Windows anymore so supposedly
that should work now in DOS as well for the 133TX2 (but not the 100).

From what I remember Promise marketing drones always played fast &
loose with ATAPI support promises - back to their Ultra33 model which
had ads which made such claims - but support docs and the real world
revealed the opposite as truth.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

You are quite right that JBOD i.e. "spanning" will be lost.

I was really referring to "single disk JBOD" i.e. non-raid/ unspanned
on a raid controller - a configuration whose terminology is conflicting &
not really standardized.

Yes, I have seen this referred to as single disk RAID but never
as single disk JBOD but probably the same thing was meant.
On hindsight I think I may have interpreted his hack differently
than you have and your interpretation is probably the right one.

Maybe he can shed some light on why the hack was necessary and what
exactly it did on the part of RAID.

He could rule out my suspicions by reflashing with a supported BIOS
and span 2-4 of the HDDs and see what happens. It makes more sense
to me to simply face that the controller he is hoping to salvage is
neither a good raid controller nor a good vanilla ATA controller - &
to stop wasting time & drop $10-20USD or equivalent on what will
actually get the job done.


From what I remember Promise marketing drones always played fast &
loose with ATAPI support promises - back to their Ultra33 model which
had ads which made such claims - but support docs and the real world
revealed the opposite as truth.

I only looked at the 133TX2 100TX2 FAQs.
They differ on the part of BIOS.

 

[Curious George]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:02:56 +0100, "Folkert Rienstra"

Yes, I have seen this referred to as single disk RAID but never
as single disk JBOD but probably the same thing was meant.
On hindsight I think I may have interpreted his hack differently
than you have and your interpretation is probably the right one.

It's a weird situation IMHO. Often in the interface it's configured
as a 1 disk "JBOD" sometimes its a 1 disk RAID0. I think I've even
seen a 1 disk RAID1 ! But really the abuse of these raid terms is
little more than a silly cosmetic problem there.

Outside of setup interfaces I usually see it referred to as a "single
disk JBOD" or just "JBOD." It's often confusing without elaboration.
It's just plain poor terminology. Fortunately nobody really seems to
care because "single disk JBOD" isn't what ppl buy raid for - it's
just nice to have available in a pinch - but isn't worth any effort
beyond that.

Maybe he can shed some light on why the hack was necessary and what
exactly it did on the part of RAID.

some elaboration would be interesting. IMO both spanning & "single
disk JBOD" are both very common features among current lower-end &
ROMB controllers. Maybe he means something different than either of
us think?

 

[Bob]

:>
::> > > On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 00:05:31 +0000 (UTC), (e-mail address removed) (Bob) wrote:
:> > >
:> > > > I've got an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, which has on-board RAID. I am
:> > > > using a Lumberjack "hacked" BIOS, which allows me to use the RAID IDE
:> > > > ports as if they are just additional IDE ports (non-RAID). I've got a lot of
:> > > > IDE devices (4 hard disks and 2 CD ROMs) so I need the extra IDE ports.
:> > >
:> > > A very weird & poor design if you need a hack to see disks as JBOD on
:> > > a "raid controller" IMO
:> >
:> > Actually, since JBOD is a feature of RAID controllers you throw that
:> > feature away along with the RAID features.
:>
:> You are quite right that JBOD i.e. "spanning" will be lost.
:
:> I was really referring to "single disk JBOD" i.e. non-raid/ unspanned
:> on a raid controller - a configuration whose terminology is conflicting &
:> not really standardized.
:
:Yes, I have seen this referred to as single disk RAID but never
:as single disk JBOD but probably the same thing was meant.
:On hindsight I think I may have interpreted his hack differently
:than you have and your interpretation is probably the right one.
:
:Maybe he can shed some light on why the hack was necessary and what
:exactly it did on the part of RAID.

Thanks all for your comments, etc. I don't know all that much about
the BIOS hack I am using other than it allows me to use the IDE ports
on the motherboard normally reserved for RAID configured disks, to be
able to attach single disks and ATAPI devices to them as if they were
attached to the standard IDE ports. So, instead of being able to
attached just 4 IDE/ATAPI devices to the M/B, I can attach 8 of them if
I wish to (4 on the standard IDE ports and 4 more on the RAID ports).

I am sure this is not the best solution but it has worked well for me
for the 4-5 years I have owned this PC and from what I have read, works
well for a lot of others as well.

Bob

 

[Curious George]

:Maybe he can shed some light on why the hack was necessary and what
:exactly it did on the part of RAID.

Thanks all for your comments, etc. I don't know all that much about
the BIOS hack I am using other than it allows me to use the IDE ports
on the motherboard normally reserved for RAID configured disks, to be
able to attach single disks and ATAPI devices to them as if they were
attached to the standard IDE ports. So, instead of being able to
attached just 4 IDE/ATAPI devices to the M/B, I can attach 8 of them if
I wish to (4 on the standard IDE ports and 4 more on the RAID ports).

I am sure this is not the best solution but it has worked well for me
for the 4-5 years I have owned this PC and from what I have read, works
well for a lot of others as well.

Bob

If it has worked for 4-5 years in the same configuration and only
recently is displaying problems then you can rule out the BIOS hack.
You should also shelf the idea that a new promise controller makes
sense at this point. You have some troubleshooting to do my friend...

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Folkert Rienstra <[email protected]> wrote:

Please change your attribution line. It shows the 'reply-to' address in stead of the 'from:' address.

Thanks all for your comments, etc. I don't know all that much about
the BIOS hack I am using other than it allows me to use the IDE ports
on the motherboard normally reserved for RAID configured disks,

That's what interests us. Normally that is not a problem with RAID
controllers as long as you know how to configure for single drives.

to be able to attach single disks and ATAPI devices to them as if
they were attached to the standard IDE ports.

So does that mean that the hack replaced the RAID bios with a standard
non-RAID bios or did the hack replace a light version RAID bios with the
full function one.

 

[Bob]

:> Thanks all for your comments, etc. I don't know all that much about
:> the BIOS hack I am using other than it allows me to use the IDE ports
:> on the motherboard normally reserved for RAID configured disks,
:
:That's what interests us. Normally that is not a problem with RAID
:controllers as long as you know how to configure for single drives.
:
:> to be able to attach single disks and ATAPI devices to them as if
:> they were attached to the standard IDE ports.
:
:So does that mean that the hack replaced the RAID bios with a standard
:non-RAID bios or did the hack replace a light version RAID bios with the
:full function one.

The hack bios replaces the RAID bios with a standard non-raid
bios...ie. I have no option to configure RAID with the hack bios.
Another hack is available to replace the standard bios with a full RAID
bios but I did not pursue it since I just wanted to add additional
non-RAID devices.

I tried a google on 'Lumberjack BIOS' hoping to find something more
technical for you guys but came up empty and instead came up with
general install questions, where to find it, etc...nothing very
technical. Maybe you'd have better luck finding something somewhere.