Adding 3rd HD

[LabanB]

Hi All,

OK, I have a 20GB HD and a 120GB HD on one IDE channel. I have a DVD burner and a CD burner on the second IDE channel.

I have a RAID card and another 120Gb HD ready to install.

Can someone point me to an idiots guide for installing the card? I have tried to follow the (very) brief manufacturers instructions, but when I come to a screen which gives me F options (ie F1 to delete one RAID section, F2 to create a new, F3 etc) when I press, I think its F2 to create, the computer ignores the command!

ANy help would be appreciated. OBTW, I will be using the new HD for video capturing once I've got those problems sorted!

Bill

[housepig]

what kind of RAID card is it?

and why don't you put the new drive on the same IDE channel as the other drive? Sounds like you've got two IDE channels and three devices, you should be able to hang another device without a RAID card....

[solarfox]

Housepig -- Actually, he has two IDE channels and four devices, if I'm reading his message right; he has a CD-R(W) burner and a DVD-R(W) burner. What he wants to do is hang a third IDE channel and a fifth IDE device onto the system.

LabanB -- Yes, we need to know more specifics; what is the exact manufacturer/model # of the RAID card you're trying to install, and onto what kind of motherboard? (Motherboard BIOS brand and revision might be helpful as well, if you know them.) What other PCI cards are currently in the system? What brand of hard drive are you connecting to the controller? And so on.

[Northstar]

Well i have a raid card installed and im presuming you dont want to use the raid side of it, you just want to use it as another ide?

Well when you get to the options F3 and whatnot if you dont want raid dont select anything then your pc should automatically boot into windows as normal after a slight pause of a few seconds.

When in windows install the drivers that came with the card and thats it, next time you boot there will be a slight pause when it scans the raid card for drives and it'll boot into windows automatically just like the first time but showing the drive you installed.

Well that how i vaguely remember setting mine up as a normal ide card, i didnt want raid as its overated, plus i got this card cheap.

[housepig]

solarfox -

quite correct, I misread his post. my bad.

I have a similar system set up, one of the Maxtor drives I bought came with a dual IDE controller card, right now I have 2 hdd on primary IDE, my dvd-r and 3rd hdd on secondary IDE, and my dvd-rom drive hanging off of the dual IDE controller card.

I think you'll get better performance hanging your drives from your onboard IDE controllers, and hang one of your rom drives from the RAID controller (assuming you don't need it for RAID purposes). The pci bus is fast enough to handle the data rates coming off a rom drive, but I'd be worried about capturing to a hdd hanging off a pci card.

[kenmo]

Don't you need at least two hard drives for RAID 0 (stripping) or RAID 1 (mirroring) ? I believe at least 4 hard drives for RAID 5...

[wthess]

I have almost exactly the same configuration, except I'm not using the RAID function on the secondary controller (It is built in). I have 3 hd, 1 DVD burner, 1 CD-RW burner.

Some RAID controllers won't allow you to use non-RAID on them, particularly some of the 3rd party ones. The reason being, if you are buying a RAID controller, then you are obviously going to set up RAID. Otherwise, you would save your money and buy a cheaper Ultra 100 controller. Why would anyone want to buy a RAID controller and install only one drive? There would be no good purpose of doing this at all.

I agree, we need more details here. Are you going to put at least two of your drives on the controller and stripe them? Or, will you be mirroring?

Kenmo, you only need 3 drives for RAID 5.

Housepig, I am capturing to an hdd hanging off a pci controller. The bottleneck isn't the pci controller itself, but rather the hdd speed. A pci controller is more than capable of handling 133mbps (ultra 133).

[LabanB]

Hi All,

OK ATA100 RAID PCI Peripheral Controller Card, Innovision Extreme IO Experience.

MB: Gigabyte K7 Triton

HD: IBM 123GB

I bought a RAID card after getting advice when I bought the HD (not from the same company though). I DO just want to use it as an extra IDE channel, so would Northstars advice be the way to go?

Also, would it be better if I added the other 123Gb HD to the same PCI card, as Wthess suggests?

Finally, I give up. What exactly does RAID stand for?

Bill

[wthess]

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

It is primarily used to protect data from data loss. There are several ways of doing this. Each has its pros and cons. All levels require at least 2 hard drives. Some levels require 3. RAID is much more expensive than standard non-RAID controllers. If you are only going to put 1 hd on a RAID controller, you are wasting your money. RAID controllers give you no benefit at all unless you have at least two drives on it and you set it up for RAID.

Anyway, you can put your hard drives in your system however you want. Here are some good general rules of thumb.

1) Don't put a DVD-recorder or CD-RW recorder on the same cable as the hard drive you will be transferring from. You could run into buffer underruns due to data congestion.
2) Don't put a DVD-recorder or CD-RW recorder on the same cable as your primary boot drive. Data congestion once again.

Here is my configuration.

On board port 0 Master - WD 40 gb boot drive Slave - 20 GB data drive I use for document storage.
On board port 1 Master - DVD+RW recorder Slave - CD-RW Recorder
PCI Ultra 100 Controller Port 0 Master - WD 160 GB drive partitioned 130GB and 30GB. 130GB is for DVD recording/capturing. 30 GB is for CD-RW recording and audio files.

However, if you are going to be doing CD copies direct from a CD drive to a CD-RW drive, then don't put them on the same cable.

There are many benefits to RAID, but only if you use it. You must have at least 2 drives to use RAID. Many controllers allow you to disable RAID and simply use it as a standard controller. Oh, and if you do use RAID, keep in mind not only is it a pain, but most controllers are still proprietary, so if you ever decide to use it with another controller, a reformat will be necessary.

[Northstar]

If you dont want to change anything on your pc just bung the new drive on the card on its own, that way there will be no drives changing their letters, the only problem with this ive found is that your dvd/cd drives are a lower drive letter than the new hardrive, the best way i found to fix this was to disable the dvd/cd drives in windows before installing the drive then renable them after its installed.... or use partition magic to rename drive letters (but you still have to disable DVD/CD drives first), maybe theres an easier way round this but i found this solution easy to do and worked flawlessley for me.

But if you follow my guide it should work without a hitch.

The way mine is set up is....

IDE 1 (onboard) 12.1gig hd Master, windows os, (partitioned) C: / D: /

IDE 2 (onboard) DVD drive Slave G: /

IDE 1 (raid) 40gig hd Master E: /

IDE 2 (raid) 120gig Slave F: /

Anyway i hope this helps you, if not come back and im sure someone will help.

[Allan55]

Every "inexpensive" Adaptec and Promise Raid card I've seen defaults to non-raid. You should be able to use it just by plugging-in and (maybe) installing drivers.

[wthess]

Northstar,

If you have Windows XP or Windows 2000, changing drive letters is much more simple than that. You can simply go into Computer Management which is under Administrative Tools. In there, you can go to the disk storage options and assign whatever drive letter you want to any of your hard drives, CD drives, DVD drives, Zip drives, etc. The only exception is your boot drive.

[kenmo]

Windows 2000 & XP allow you to do Raid 0 (stripping) without a raid controller...

Motherboard
ide0 - WD 80 (C: 20 Partion for Windows 2000OS and D: 20 gb for data)
ide1 - Pioneer A05 & HP7200cd-rw

Prmomise ATA 133 PCI (Non-Raid)
ide0 - WD 40 gb + Fujitus 40 gb
ide1 - Quantum 40 gb

I have the remaining 40 gb partition from my WD80 stripped with the 3 x 40 gb drives on my Promise controller for a 160GB drive...It's extremely fast for avi capturing...

[lechtin]

LabanB

Here's an article on RAID and ATA controllers that may give you some background to decide how to setup your system.

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20021112/index.html

[LabanB]

Hi,

I've managed to get the system to recognise the new HD. ALl I need to do now is stop the system from asking me to set up the RAID at start up!

Cheers to all for all the help BTW.

Bill

[wthess]

LabanB,

Most all RAID controllers give you the option to set them up on start-up. For adaptec, I think it pauses and tells you to press CTRL-A, CTRL-ALT-A or something like that to enter setup and configure it. Some controllers have an option in them to shorten the length of that pause. You may want to go into that setup and see.

[Gazorgan]

I should point out you'd be better off removing that 20 GB drive. Almost certainly it's slowing your primary 120 GB drive down. IDE's are only as fast as the slowest drive on the cable. That's one reason why your DVD drive may rip slow.

[wthess]

Gazorgan,

If I'm not mistaken, that rule no longer applies to IDE drives/technology manufactured after 1998. Apparently, somewhere during that time, they changed the specs on UDMA so that whatever speed the drive was manufactured to do should do. I will go home tonight and run some tests on mine as I have my 20gb Ultra66 slaved off my 40gb Ultra100. I'll post the results tomorrow.

However, for SCSI, I think the rule still applies.

Anyone know for sure?

[Jayhawk]

wthess is correct about the speed. According to Intel's Application Accelerator documentation (and my motherboard documentation), devices on the same channel will perform at their maximum design capability.

Used to be true about the slowest one setting the pace back in the old days (mid-90's) but not anymore. If you are running Intel App. Accel. it will tell you what each drive is running at. It's a free download.

[LabanB]

Hi Gazorgan,

I haven't noticed any problems with ripping DVDs, just getting the computer to recognise the RAID card and Disk. But thats sorted now

Bill

PS The WinXP reinstall appears to have been a success too