Question about RAID. Can I.........?

[coomarlin]

I'm a little confused about how RAID works. I know it can be used to store data on two drives simultaniously for redundant storage and I believe it can also be used to store different parts of a file on two seperate drives to increase performance.

But what I'm wondering is can it be used to connect 8 different IDE devices at a time? I saw pictures of the KT7 RAID and noticed that it had 4 IDE connecters. Can each of these IDE connectors handle 2 devices. Right now I have a 7200rpm ATA100 hard drive, a 5400 udma33 hard drive, an internal zip drive, and a 36x cdrom drive. I'd like to put the ATA100 drive on it's own seperate channel because I've been told the drive will run at the speed of the slowest device on the channel. And in order to run the ATA100 drive on it's own channel I'd need more than 2 IDE channels to handle the rest of my stuff.

I wouldn't need RAID if I can only use it as redundant storage. I'd just like to have the extra IDE channels. Is this possible?

 

[jsbush]

Yes it's possible, I'm doing it right now with the Promise FastTrak 66.

 

[rarebear]

NO and Yes
I am not postive but prety sure you can not connect 8 divices (normally)
If you want raid you need 2 drives the same and if you and another 2 divices you need another 2 drives the same and they only can be HDs connected... There was a good article at overclocker.uk of something like that about the new A Bit P3 board on how it works

 

[coomarlin]

I don't nessessarily want to use raid 0 or 1. I just want the extra IDE connectors for the 5 or 6 devices I plan on hooking up. I was told that the new MSI K7T Turbo will have RAID. Should I wait till that comes out?

I'd like to do the following:

IDE 1 Master: 7200rpm ATA 100 drive
IDE 1 Slave: Nothing
IDE 2 Master: 5400rpm udma33 drive
IDE 2 Slave: 36x CDrom
IDE 3 Master: 12x10x32 CD-RW
IDE 3 Slave: Internal Zip Drive
IDE 4 Master and slave: Nothing for now

Is this humanly possible?

 

[jaeger66]

If you want extra IDE channels but no RAID, look at a board like the Asus A7V. It has 2 Ultra 66 channels and 2 Ultra 100 channels.