HDD and pci to ata (raid card) combo?

[tsantsa]

I want to get myself another harddrive but I already have 2 and my mobo isn't a raid mobo. I was wondering if anyone knew of any deals online that when you buy the HDD you get the promise (or whatever brand) card included.

Any help would sure be appreciated. These deals were kind of common about a year ago, but they have seeming all dryed up.

[redwudz]

I haven't noticed any combo deals lately, but controller cards are pretty cheap and you can use any drive on sale then. I use a Promise TX2 PCI card because it will work with slower drives, such as CD or DVD drives.

I also have a cheaper Highpoint Rocket RAID card in another machine that will only work with PC133 drives. I don't use it as RAID, just to add an extra drive. These cards are very inexpensive.

[ViRaL1]

Are you wanting raid for performance or just being able to make use of more space? If you're not looking for a big performance increase, any PCI ATA controller should do the job. In addition (if you're running 2000 or XP Pro), you can create dynamic disks and either stripe 2 drives (if they're the same size) in Disk Management OR span 2 drives if the sizes are different.

[tsantsa]

Not looking for the raid, just to add another drive.

[ViRaL1]

In that case, any PCI ATA controller will work. No need for a RAID card. Newegg should have something reasonable, or check Computer Geeks.