Asus CUSL2, need more IDE connections......

[jamesbond007]

Hello, everyone. I will be getting my new system setup here within the next week or so, and I was wondering, since all of the onboard ATA100 connectors on the CUSL2 board are going to be used for my LS-120, CDRW, CDROM, and DVDROM, I need more IDE ports for my HDDs. I've read a few reviews, but can't decide on whether to get the Promise ATA100 controller card or the Abit HotRod ATA100 card. They both seem really good to me, but I guess that the Abit's card doesn't need to have special drivers installed for it to work, so when doing a fresh install of Windows, I wouldn't need to move a HDD to the onboard ATA100 controller???? Aparently, with the Promise controller, I would have to do that, which I don't want to. What I'm wondering is which card is the better of the two, performance wise, stability wise, driver wise, as well as compatibility wise, especially with Win9x and Win2k. I am starting with (2) IBM 45GB ATA100 7200rpm drives, but I am shortly getting two more, with a grand total of four drives. One more quick thing, when I first start out with two drives, would I get better performance with both drives on one chain, as one being master and one slave? Or one on each of their own chains, as both being masters?

Thanks again!

 

[Tummy]

Hey dude. I just sold my CUSL2 setup... anyway, I'd personally go with the Promise card out of those two choices. But a question, if I may - if you have 2 IBM 45GB drives why aren't you getting a RAID card? If you raid those two suckers, they'll be way fast. The promise ata100 card can be modified to be a RAID card too if you want to save money (it's not hard). Plus, with the Promise ata100 card you wouldn't need to move it between channels like you are thinking, either.

I have heard that it is better to use both channels as opposed to m/s on a single channel, but on my setup, Using a M/S configuration instead of 2 M's is slightly faster in my benchmarks.

Other then that... I can tell you I've never had a problem with my Promise card... no experience with the Abit though either.

 

[jamesbond007]

<bump>

 

[Agrippa]

I'd go with the Hotrod Pro, based on the HPT370 controller found on the VP6 (which I use). This is an excellent raid controller and gives me faster benchmarks (max 77MBps/min36MBps on Winbench99) than the Promise on my previous MSI 694D Pro Raid motherboard. Bound to be cheaper than the Promise too!

Agrippa