Abit KT7-Raid with One Drive?

[Strike]

This may be a dumb question, but...

Can I use the Abit KT7-Raid ATA100 support with only 1 drive?

ie. I have an IBM ATA100 drive and wanted a mobo that supported ATA100. However, I only bought one drive. I do not want mirroring or other Raid features, just ATA100.

Thanks, Strike

 

[timco]

Yes, you don't have to use RAID at all. I have a KT7-RAID with two 30Gb IBM 75GXPs and I just use them as normal hard drives - one for 98SE and the other for SuSE Linux. Works like a treat... Make sure you use an ATA100 cable (with blue, gray and black connectors). The blue one goes in the mobo and the black one in your master drive. A slave device goes in the gray plug [plug any CDRs/CDRWs/zips into the normal ATA interface]. You can use the mysterious Cable Select jumper on the drive, which I have never used in 6 years until 2 weeks ago when I got my KT7-RAID.

 

[Strike]

Thanks for the quick post Timco.

Being a newbie to this, I still have some questions.

In the configuration you mentioned, are you using ATA100 ? or is it only supporting ATA66? I have heard this may be irrelavent since even an ATA100 HD may only get just over 66 MB/sec.

Do you still have to install the HPT370 ( I think this is the chip number ) for your configuration to work?

Reading the manual, I noticed it said only use up to an 18" ATA100 cable. I have the short one that came with the mobo, but am getting a 24" cable with my case. Will this still work? is it going to affect something?

My primary goal was to get the best HD performance I could get.... with one drive....for now.

Thanks Again,
Strike

 

[DaddyG]

Strike, anything over the 18" max length is hit and miss. Could work, could slow down due to error retries, could hang.

 

[timco]

I don't know whether it's using ATA100 but I would think that it is. Sandra's benchmarks give me >23000 (v. fast).

Yes, you do have to install the HPT370 software (well, you seem to have to install it). I installed my stuff in the following order:

1. Win98SE
2. VIA 4in1
3. Video card
4. Modem
5. Sound card
6. HPT370
7. Apps

If you're installing USB, install the VIA USB drivers and MS's USB patch after step 3 (before the video card). I didn't install it because I cut down the activated stuff in the BIOS in an attempt to get a stable system (99% there now: only a few problems with Deus Ex remaining). You may also want to disable ACPI when you install Windows as I've found it works better without it (use "setup /p i" when you install.

As for cables, read DaddyG's post and obey

 

[SkyDiver]

timco: Is it better to use Cable Select instead of Master/Slave? I've got two IBM GXP's (30 and 15 GB). Both set to master on Ide 3 & 4. What would be the advantage of Cable Select?

SkyDiver

 

[Strike]

Timco,

I wish I had read your post last night before I installed windows. I would have used the /p i option. Oh well. So far all is stable, but I have several cards to go. HD is working fine with the longer cables, but I have not benchmarked anything yet.

I should say I love my case. Got it from Jim at CoolCases! It kicks butt and is so easy to work with.

Strike
-------------
800Mhz Tbird
Abit KT7-Raid
IBM 30 Gig ATA100
Asus 7100 Geforce MX
Mushkin 128 CAS2 Rev2
SbLive
3Com Nic
3Com 56k modem
Addtronics 6896a with 4 fans
Antec 300watt PS

 

[timco]

Sky Diver: I have absolutely no idea. I read somewhere that you could put ATA100 drives on Cable Select and the computer would happily work out which one to use. They would work just as well with the master/slave jumpers set. My drives are both on IDE3 to reduce the number of cables within the case. The advantages? I have no idea. The fact that ATA100 has specific locations for its master/slave drives on the cable kinda negates the fact that you don't have to worry about having one drive on master and another on slave if you use cable select.

Strike: I probably reinstalled Windows/drives/etc about 7 or 8 times before I got a stable system (which it is at the moment, thankfully). Fortunately it only took me about 20 mins to install the OS each time, plus I was determined to get it right (not entirely convinced it's right now, but never mind) so I wasn't too bothered about reinstalling all the time... The ACPI problem may have just been my combination of hardware (SB Value, GF2, USR modem). Perhaps Windows Whistler will sort all this nonsense out (it's kinda pathetic, really)...

Have fun
Tim

 

[jebus]

If you disable ACPI, do you still have power management features? like standby and hibernate? I usually hibernate my computer (Win2k) instead of shutting down since restarting the computer takes less than 10 seconds (unofficially). What advantages are there to disabling it?

 

[timco]

My computer works better .

I don't really use the power management stuff (I disabled it in the BIOS). I think you can still use it. My old Celeron 400 with Intel FJ400ZX (?) motherboard had power management, so I think the new one will have too...

Ah... just looked in Device Manager. Advanced Power Management is there. So, a tenative yes...(?)