ASUS A7V8X Question

[mralex]

I am thinking of getting a ASUS A7V8X because my old (really old) A7V is broken.

If I buy a A7V8X with RAID, how many parallel ATA devices can I use with RAID and without RAID?
On ASUS web site, I can see only 2 parallel IDE ports plus one serial ATA port.
Does that mean I can only use 6 devices?
I think I read somewhere that I can only connect 1 parallel device to the serial ATA port.

Currently, my A7V has 4 IDE ports (2 x DMA33 and 2 x DMA66/100), and I have 8 ATA devices.
Will I be able to connect and use all my 8 ATA devices with A7V8X?
Too bad, I can't get a copy of the manual now because it seems like their web site is down.

Thanks.

 

[dszd0g]

I have an A7V8X and this is what the situation seems to be to me.

There are 2 non-RAID parallel IDE/ATA ports. This allows for 4 devices.

There is 1 RAID parallel IDE/ATA connector (blue). However, I have not seen anyone be able to get this connector to recognize more than one device.

There are 2 serial ATA RAID connectors. However, one needs to use an adapter to plug a parallel IDE device into these connectors. These adapters were not available when the A7V8X was first released, but they are available (if one looks enough) now. I do not own one of these adapters and I have not seen how many devices have successfully been hooked up to the serial ATA connectors, but I am pretty sure you can only connect 1 drive to each serial ATA connector. I know that people have been successful at hooking up 1 parallel ATA device to each serial ATA connector, but I am not sure about more than that. Be aware that the adapters are rather expensive at this point ($40 or so).

So I am pretty sure you should have no difficulty connecting up to 7 devices if you are willing to shell out the $80 for parallel ATA to serial ATA adapters. Whether more than that is possible, I do not know.

I would not recommend this board for 8 parallel IDE devices. There are so many boards out there that have 4 parallel ATA connectors, that I do not see the A7V8X as the best solution for you. It really isn't that impressive of a board, anyways.

Any reason you haven't gone SCSI?

 

[mralex]

Originally posted by: dszd0g
I have an A7V8X and this is what the situation seems to be to me.

There are 2 non-RAID parallel IDE/ATA ports. This allows for 4 devices.

There is 1 RAID parallel IDE/ATA connector (blue). However, I have not seen anyone be able to get this connector to recognize more than one device.

There are 2 serial ATA RAID connectors. However, one needs to use an adapter to plug a parallel IDE device into these connectors. These adapters were not available when the A7V8X was first released, but they are available (if one looks enough) now. I do not own one of these adapters and I have not seen how many devices have successfully been hooked up to the serial ATA connectors, but I am pretty sure you can only connect 1 drive to each serial ATA connector. I know that people have been successful at hooking up 1 parallel ATA device to each serial ATA connector, but I am not sure about more than that. Be aware that the adapters are rather expensive at this point ($40 or so).

So I am pretty sure you should have no difficulty connecting up to 7 devices if you are willing to shell out the $80 for parallel ATA to serial ATA adapters. Whether more than that is possible, I do not know.

I would not recommend this board for 8 parallel IDE devices. There are so many boards out there that have 4 parallel ATA connectors, that I do not see the A7V8X as the best solution for you. It really isn't that impressive of a board, anyways.

Any reason you haven't gone SCSI?

Thanks, dszd0g.
I finally got A7V8X because I think it is more "future-proof".
Anyway, I started accumulating HD for a long time.
The smallest ones are 13GB and 30GB, so giving up these small ones OK for me.
I am not using SCSI because I didn't know I will have so many disks and SCSI are expensive.

OK, here comes another question.
If I do not use RAID, how many IDE devices I can use?
In other words, do I have to use RAID (either 0 or 1) in order to use the serial ports?
I tried to connect one HD to the RAID port, but it doesn't show up in Windows even I have already installed the Promise driver.
Any idea?
Thanks!

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: mralex

OK, here comes another question.
If I do not use RAID, how many IDE devices I can use?
In other words, do I have to use RAID (either 0 or 1) in order to use the serial ports?
I tried to connect one HD to the RAID port, but it doesn't show up in Windows even I have already installed the Promise driver.
Any idea?
Thanks!

You should be able to use the RAID ports as JBOD (Just a bunch of Disks). Have you hit Cntrl-A (I believe?) when booting up and gone into the Promise BIOS to see what it shows there?