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Adding 4 Hard Drives

V

vivace

Junior Member
Hi Gang,

I've been doing a little research about adding four 120GB hard drives to my system and would like to make sure I'm going about this the best way.

I propose to add:
(1) Promise Ultra 100TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card
(4) WD1200JB 120GB ATA/100 Hard Drives

Two slots are on the PCI card. I was going to configure 2 Masters and 2 Slaves.

My current system has the Primary IDE on the MoBO being used by my existing WD 120GB HD. The Secondary IDE on the MoBo is being used by my existing CD-RW/DVD drive.

I'm running WinXP Home via an Intel P4 2.8c chip on the 865PERLK MoBo.

Sometime in the future I will add a DVD-RW and aim to interface it via another PCI IDE Controller Card.

Would any of you do this via this configuration or if not why and what are some other options. With the chip and MoBo I'm utilizing I'm cruising along fairly well and would like to keep it so if at all possible.

Any input would be appreciated. Thank You.
 
Welcome to Anandtech vivace.

Your plan seems pretty good....you not gonna be running any kind of raid with those drives? I believe you could run Raid 0+1 but you would of course have 240GB (unformatted) space instead of 480GB but you would have striping for speed and mirroring for backup.

But if you want straight IDE I think you have the best combination there.

When you get your DVD Writer you can have it on the MB secondary channel and the DVD/CD-RW on the primary channel, copying CD's/DVD's on the fly will be improved by this setup.

Jamie
 
I agree, sounds like a good plan. I also question, are you planning on RAID in some fashion?

I was initially chuckling about the amount of space, but then I realized I am out of room on my 40 gig.
 
I wasn't planning on RAID, my research didn't go that far. I don't know that much about RAID other than on the postive side I'd have back-up functionality and the negative side I would halve my total storage.

Concerning the DVD-RW addition in the future: I was under the impression that if I interfaced both a CD-RW/DVD and a DVD-RW via the secondary MoBo IDE, making one the master and the other the slave that speed would severly be reduced when copying from one to the other.

Thank you for your input to my question.
 
For a little more cost you could do RAID 5...not halving the storage, but again, controllers cost more. Software RAID 5 in Win2k does work very well, BTW, but it eats CPU to write to it.
The CD/DVD copy speed may be reduced having them on the same channel.
The mobo would be the defining factor keeping you from using the CD and DVD drives on the mobo. I know the K7S5A lets you do that and have the HDs on a controller card, booting from them, but I have no clue about other mobos doing it, much less Intel ones, as it's a strange thing to do for non-servers.
 
Remember that devices set up as master and slave are on the same data path and each will suffer a chokepoint if both are accessed at the same time. Promise and Highpoint make 4 channel Ide cards that are not much more costly.
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
why 4 120gb? they have 300gb drives. mmore drives = more heat = more noise = more psu requirement.
Click to expand...

...= more chance of failure, both base don having more drives, and making more heat.
 
Unless you really need more than 220GB of space I'd go RAID 0+1. You get the benefit of both speed and fault tolerance that way. Not sure if your Promise card can do 0+1 or any sort of RAID though.

I've got the Promise SX-4000 RAID controller and 4x120GB WD 120's and I'm very happy with it. They are in an Antec Sonata with a pair of 120mm fans (1 rear and 1 just behind the 4 drive array) that keep them extremely cool. Same case config does a great job with cooling my pair of WD Raptors in my main rig.

You can PM me if you have any questions on my setup. Good luck!
 
Originally posted by: Robor
Unless you really need more than 220GB of space I'd go RAID 0+1. You get the benefit of both speed and fault tolerance that way. Not sure if your Promise card can do 0+1 or any sort of RAID though.

I've got the Promise SX-4000 RAID controller and 4x120GB WD 120's and I'm very happy with it. They are in an Antec Sonata with a pair of 120mm fans (1 rear and 1 just behind the 4 drive array) that keep them extremely cool. Same case config does a great job with cooling my pair of WD Raptors in my main rig.

You can PM me if you have any questions on my setup. Good luck!
Click to expand...
...with the SX4000, you can do RAID 5, giving around 360GB (3/4 total), and if you have some PC133 sitting around the price isn't bad. Performance isn't as good as Adaptecs, but not abd for half the price, and better than single drives.
 
reading this post and quick question:
i have 4 ide devices connected to my mb
2 HD's a DVD-RW and a DVD-ROM
will it be to my benefit to "mix" devices on the cables?
ie primary HD/DVD-ROM on one DVD-RW/sec HD on the other cable (master/slave)
will i see some additional benefit other than direct copying of cd/dvds?
 
Originally posted by: Torro
reading this post and quick question:
i have 4 ide devices connected to my mb
2 HD's a DVD-RW and a DVD-ROM
will it be to my benefit to "mix" devices on the cables?
ie primary HD/DVD-ROM on one DVD-RW/sec HD on the other cable (master/slave)
will i see some additional benefit other than direct copying of cd/dvds?
Click to expand...

Yes, mixing is a good idea. In addition to direct cd to cd copying being slightly faster, hard drive to hard drive xfers will be much faster.
 
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