Best way to hook up IDE devices on A7V333-R (but not using RAID)

[IndyJaws]

I have two WD800BB drives, a DVD-ROM and CDRW. What would be the best configuration to arrange them in if I'm not going to be running a RAID configuration now?

My first thought would be to put the boot drive on the primary IDE, the two CD drives on the secondary IDE and the second HD on the Promise IDE 1. Would this make sense, or am I just as good to put the two hard drives on the primary IDE and the two optical drives on the secondary IDE?

Thanks in advance!

 

[AkumaBao]

It's best to seperate them all. It would be better to have a drive with it's own channel than to share it with another device. You should be able to use your RAID controller as basic hard drive controllers. (only HDD's) Just put each HDD on a seperate RAID channel, and your DVD/CD on the primary/secondary.

 

[Boonesmi]

i agree with AkumaBao

put them each on its own channel (make sure you set the configure the raid controller to not run as raid, but to run as an extra ata133 controller)

put both of the harddrives on the promise controller (each as its own master)
and put the two optical drives on the via controller (again each as its own master)

 

[IndyJaws]

I thought about doing that as well. How about setting the boot sequence - will it automatically notice the boot drive on Promise IDE 1, rather than on Primary IDE?

Sorry to be clueless - I've never had a RAID mobo - my board arrives on Friday and I want to be ready to build my new system when it gets here!

Edit: As far as configuring the RAID controller to just act as additional IDE devices, rather than a RAID configuration, am I not mistaken in thinking that I don't need to do anything. It's only if I want to make it RAID, that I have to configure it in the BIOS?

 

[AkumaBao]

Yes, it will recognize them to be regular devices, unless you assign RAID arrays.

 

[Boonesmi]

each raid board is different... some have a jumper that needs to be either set for raid, or ata100/100.... other boards you can change that setting in the bios


also in the bios you can tell it to look for your boot drive on the promise controller ( you will need to do that since you will only have optical drives on the via controller)

 

[IndyJaws]

Thanks for the quick info! You guys rock!

 

[AkumaBao]

Thanx. we try.

 

[broadwayblue]

i remember having a problem doing this on my a7v133 when i set it up last year. it seems that the OS wouldn't recognize the HD on the raid controller until i first booted with it connected to the IDE controller and then installing the drivers for the Promise controller. then it worked fine.

 

[IndyJaws]

That makes sense as well...

It's never easy, is it?

 

[AkumaBao]

Well, I can see where that could happen, but with my Iwill, it picks it up on POST, and Windows detected it easily. On the other hand just install the OS with the Master HDD on the primary, and after install switch it over. Just make sure the RAID jumper isn't set to enabled.

 

[IndyJaws]

Or, I suppose I could quit being lazy and check the manual I downloaded a few hours ago.

IDE HARD DRIVE
This field allows you to select which IDE hard disk drive to use in the boot sequence. Pressing [Enter] will show the product ID's of all connected IDE hard disk drives.

Sounds like I'll be able to select it that way.

 

[powerMarkymark]

<< i agree with AkumaBao

put them each on its own channel (make sure you set the configure the raid controller to not run as raid, but to run as an extra ata133 controller)

put both of the harddrives on the promise controller (each as its own master)
and put the two optical drives on the via controller (again each as its own master) >>



I have the Abit KR7A Raid and two WD 60GB HDDs and this is excactly how I set mine up.

 

[Wiscow]

Am I correct in saying that only Promise RAID supports the ability to be used as additional IDE controllers and that Highpoint does not?

 

[Boonesmi]

promise, highpoint, and AMI all support being used as either a plain ata controller in addition to being a raid controller

 

[CoDerEd]

promise, highpoint, and AMI all support being used as either a plain ata controller in addition to being a raid controller

not true, some raid controller on some mobo can only be used as raid purpose only.
i forgot what brand but i read about it in here on some review about RAID mobo some months ago.

 

[chubbymidget]

I was under the belief from various reviews that the Abit highpoint RAID was the only one able to be setup as normal IDE drives.

Is this not the case. Are there chipset or board exceptions?

 

[Zap]

I think many of the onboard Promise RAID controllers are a "lite" version, which doesn't give you features such as being a regular IDE controller or different stripe sizes.

 

[TAsunder]

I have more or less the same configuration and got EXTREMELY frustrated with the a7v333.

Firstly, you can't connect the cd rom drives to the promise controller. This is important because my initial setup was to connect my secondary (formerly win98) drive to the promise and my primary drive to the standard ide port, and a cd rom to each. So the raid controller created an array (of one drive) in its bios / config for the secondary drive.

So then, I had to hook my other hard drive up to the promise. It created it as the second array and would ALWAYS boot to the first array. And there is no way to reorder the boot sequence that I can tell. I tried setting the first array drive to slave, cable select, etc. and nothing works. Say hello to frustration.

So I had to hook my main hard drive back up to the normal ata port and put 2 cd roms on one channel in order to get things to work.

Furthermore, the stupid a7v333 raid thing takes FOREVER to scan drives on booting.