Simple question relating to Raid / Serial Raid

  • Thread starter Thread starter JohnFol
  • Start date Start date
J

JohnFol

I currently have a m.board that supports IDE Raid. I therefore have 2 std
IDE drives connected to the Raid controller, freeing up the normal IDE
connectors for CD's / DVD etc.

I need to replace the m/board but am finding it hard to get a board with IDE
Raid. They all seem to have Serial Raid connectors.

Not wanting to waste my 2 perfectly good IDE drives, does anyone know if
they will work with a Serial ATA raid controller?
 
I currently have a m.board that supports IDE Raid. I therefore have 2 std
IDE drives connected to the Raid controller, freeing up the normal IDE
connectors for CD's / DVD etc.

I need to replace the m/board but am finding it hard to get a board with IDE
Raid. They all seem to have Serial Raid connectors.

Not wanting to waste my 2 perfectly good IDE drives, does anyone know if
they will work with a Serial ATA raid controller?
Click to expand...

There are SATA-to-IDE adapters available from High Point and others but
I've no idea how well they work or how compatible they are with the various
mbrds. The best solution might be a PCI-IDE card from Promise, like their
Ultra 133 TX2 - there are other brands of course but I know Promise cards
work well.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
What sort of board are you looking for? Intel? AMD?

An Asus P4C800 Deluxe
(http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket478/p4c800-d/overview.htm) includes a
Promise RAID controller, which has one ATA133 controller (supports 2 IDE
drives), and 2 SATA connectors. I believe that you can do RAID on two IDE
drives, or on two SATA drives. I believe that it even supports RAID 0+1
(striping *and* mirroring) if you install all 4 drives. The P4P800 Deluxe is
similar, and a little cheaper (865PE chipset instead of the 875).

In the AMD-compatible world, the Asus A8V deluxe also includes a Promise
RAID controller, similar to the above. I have one of those, but I have made
no use of the Promise controller so far. (The main drawback to the Promise
controller is that it is supposed to be incompatible with ATAPI drives. Hard
drives only are recommended.) This is a Socket 939 board, but I assume that
there are similar boards in the Socket 754 and Socket 462 lines.

Getting a PCI IDE RAID card would be another alternative.

It is also possible to buy adapters that permit IDE drives (or parallel ATA,
as they're now called) to connect to SATA ports. Newegg (www.newegg.com)
lists three for $20 to $27 (US) each. (By comparison, Newegg lists a number
of 160 GB SATA drives for less than $100 each.)

I don't wish to encourage you to waste your "2 perfectly good IDE drives",
but you may find that it makes sense to do so. (Or, scrub them carefully to
remove all traces of your personal data and donate them to a worthy cause.)

Have fun.

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
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