Old mobo, should I use IDE or Promise IDE connectors?

[balane]

I give hand me down hardware to a nephew and try to keep his PC chugging along as well as I can. I got him hooked up on wow and the computer runs it pretty well but it seems like hdd access is slowing him down. I put a 7200rpm 250gb hard drive in it and connected it to the standard IDE connectors on his motherboard. I notice during boot up and on the board itself that it has Promise IDE connectors as well. Would he get any better performance if I used those connectors instead of the standard IDE ports? Thanks.

XP 2400+
Asus A7V266-E
250GB WD IDE hard drive
AGP ATI 3850 video card
2GB PC2100 RAM
XP Pro 32 Bit

 

[cubby1223]

The promise ones are most likely raid only. Use the other connectors.

 

[Blazer]

not really going to see any diff between the two controllers, setting up a raid 0 would give more performance though it requires more care.

 

[KGB]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
The promise ones are most likely raid only. Use the other connectors.

IIRC, that MB had the ATA66 standard IDE controllers as well as the ATA100/133 set (NOT RAID).

Try this, boot to your OS and install the drivers for the second (Promise) IDE controllers.
Then shut down and move your IDE cables to the Promise controller and set your BIOS to boot from it. It might show up in your boot order as a SCSI controller.

Let us know.


I had an Asus A7V with this arrangement and it worked very well.