Primary IDE Ultra DMA vs ITE IDE Ultra ATA

[RonAKA]

Upgrading a computer and about to put in the drives. I have a 250 GB relatively new drive, an older 40 GB drive, and a CD RW. Ideally I want to put the 250 GB on a IDE by itself on the faster channel and make it the boot drive, with the 40 GB and CD on the other channel. My board has a primary IDE which it says it supports Ultra DMA 100/66, and also a ITE IDA which is said to support Ultra ATA 133/100/66.

The hitch is that the manual says it needs drivers installed to run the ITE IDA. I'm presuming I have little choice but to install the 250 GB on the primary IDE as well as the CD RW as a slave, so I can install the operating system. After than and installing the drivers, what should I do to get the best performance and get all three drives working?

Any help much appreciated,

Ron

 

[xtknight]

ITE is a manufacturer of chipsets. Likely, the ITE IDE is a secondary chip to your motherboard chipset offering a couple more IDE channels.

I don't believe that generic IDE chipsets require drivers. My JMicron IDE is supported in XP just fine, and surely XP uses nothing but the generic IDE protocol. I never slipstreamed JMicron drivers in there.

I believe add-on boards need drivers, though, since it can't use standard motherboard "int 13h" protocol. Depends on how it's wired up.

 

[RonAKA]

I did some further checking on my drives. The 250 is a Maxtor 6B250R0 and claimed to be Ultra ATA 133. The 40 is a Maxtor 6L040J2, and surprisingly info on the net says it is also ATA 133. Should I just put both on the ITE IDE Ultra ATA 133 connector and see what happens?

Alternately could I put the 250 and CD on the other IDE Ultra ATA 100, and after I install the drivers try to move the HD to the 133? Looking at this information, it kind of looks like the ITE IDE does not work without the drivers, so this may be the only way.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware...2-VM-Booting-Issues-ftopict169120.html

Ron

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: RonAKA
I did some further checking on my drives. The 250 is a Maxtor 6B250R0 and claimed to be Ultra ATA 133. The 40 is a Maxtor 6L040J2, and surprisingly info on the net says it is also ATA 133. Should I just put both on the ITE IDE Ultra ATA 133 connector and see what happens?

Alternately could I put the 250 and CD on the other IDE Ultra ATA 100, and after I install the drivers try to move the HD to the 133? Looking at this information, it kind of looks like the ITE IDE does not work without the drivers, so this may be the only way.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware...2-VM-Booting-Issues-ftopict169120.html

Ron

You will not notice any performance difference between ata100 and ata133, only thing that ata133 will improve buffered read speeds.

I would just put the 250 gig on the main ide channel, and the 40 gig and cd on the ITE IDE after you installed the os and drivers for it.
Also check that the ITE IDE controller supports optical drives.

 

[RonAKA]

Thanks for the help. Will have a go at it tomorrow AM. The post at this other forum seems to suggest you can run off the ITE IDE. Not sure I'm following quite exactly but it appears one can make a floppy with the ITE drivers on it, and have XP load them during installation. Probably will give this a try. If it doesn't work I won't be backing up too much.

"The Red PRI/SEC_EIDE connectors run off the ITE8211F cotroller and can be used for IDE RAID or you can use them as extra (2nd and 3rd) PATA drive ports like the blue. BUT, this is only after you install the ITE8211F driver for this, that's found on your motherboard driver CD (use the ITE8211F make a driver floppy option on the menu). If installing say, XP from your CD (connected to your blue connector) you would have to press F6 with this floppy in your floppy drive when the XP install displays the option so it can load this driver. This will then allow PATA IDE drives to be connected to either red connector."

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?boa...060503113747853&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

So if I can make a driver floppy, I'll start with the CD drive in the primary, and the 250 GB in the secondary ITE. Will leave the 40 GB out until I get the system to install on the 250 BG as C:.

Step 1 Update:

No problem making the driver floppy. When I put this floppy drive in this new PC (built couple of weeks ago), I wondered if I would ever use it..... Now if Bill Gates lets me load it during installation....

Ron

 

[RonAKA]

Bill gates not cooperative. Set up the hard drives to use the EIDE's, and the CD on the primary. Windows install gave me a chance to use the driver floppy. However, it errored out when trying to run the driver file. Perhaps not enough of Windows installed for it to take?

In any case went back to original plan of installing 250 GB drive on Primary as the master, and the CD as the slave. Installed XP on the hard drive and then updated the drivers. With that done, went back to both HD's on the EIDE channel, and then CD as the master on the Primary. All went well and seems to be running fine.

It would have been nasty if I had to put the Boot HD and the CD on the same Primary cable. It was not long enough, and I had to hang the HD in the case long enough to install Windows.

So in the end, not so impressed with this MB having the EIDE. Makes installation much more cumbersome. If I ever corrupt the drivers, it will all have to be done over again.