Quick Questions - IDE cables connection/RAID 1 - building new computer.

[GroundedSailor]

Posted in Gen Hardware but got no replies. Am stuck - any help appreciated:

Am building a new computer & having a few problems.

Computer specs:
Case - Thermaltake Xaser III V1000A
PSU - Antec True 480
MoBo - MSI K7N2G-ILSR
CPU - Athlon 2800+ Barton
HDD - WD 160GB WD1600JBRTL UATA100 8MB Buffer
Video - MSI G4Ti4200-VTD8X
OS - XP Home
DVD - LITE ON 16X
DVD-RW - Verbatim
plus the usual stuff - floppy/keyb mouse etc.

I bought 24 inch round IDE cables. Unfortunately one cable turned out to be bad - had me going around in circles for half a day - so now I have 1 round 24" cable and the flat cable that came with the HDD. (Also intend to pick up Partition Magic to increase the partition sizes to the full capacity of the HDD - right now stuck with 127GB size and the rest is unformatted space)

The plan is to pick up another 160 GB HDD in a few days and use the onboard controller to RAID them. (RAID 1). So my intention to connect them was as follows:
IDE 1 Master HDD
IDE 2 Master DVD Rom
IDE 2 Slave DVD-RW
(My logic being that I never do burning on the fly - always write to HDD first)

My Questions:
1. The case is rather large so cable reach is an important consideration. Does it matter which connector (on a cable) is connected to which device as long the jumpers on the device are set to master and slave respectively?

2. Can the 2nd HDD be connected to IDE 3 without connecting the serial ATA Cable? (I can't see where the serial cable connects to the HDD). The manual say to attach the parallel ATA cables to the HDD and ATA ports and then connect the serial ATA cable to each drive and the serial ATa ports on the Mobo. I'm confused. My understanding is that it is either or as the HDD has to have the correct connection. So my configuration would be:
IDE 1 Master HDD
IDE 2 Master DVD Rom
IDE 2 Slave DVD-RW
IDE 3 Raid HDD

Will this work?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Your proposed setup will not work. You need to use ide3 and a sata port or 2 sata ports for raid on your board. So you will need 1 or 2 sata adapters. I would recommend setting up as follows:
ide1 master = cd/rw
ide2 master = dvd
sata1 = hd
sata2 = hd

Also, why not copy on the fly? This has been perfectly good for some time with buffer underrun protection.

 

[GroundedSailor]

jackschmittusa I see what you are saying, but the HDD I have does not have a SATA connection. It has the standard IDE connector. How do I connect it to the SATA port on the Mobo? At present the HDD is connected as master on IDE 1. Will it still work as the boot drive when connected to the SATA port?

What exactly are SATA adapters?

Any ideas on the IDE cable connection?

Re burning, since it will be used for video editing I feel more comfortable writing to HDD first. I've used burnproof for while but still had coasters - not too many though.

Thanks

 

[shootinyou]

Originally posted by: GroundedSailor
jackschmittusa I see what you are saying, but the HDD I have does not have a SATA connection. It has the standard IDE connector. How do I connect it to the SATA port on the Mobo? At present the HDD is connected as master on IDE 1. Will it still work as the boot drive when connected to the SATA port?

What exactly are SATA adapters?

Any ideas on the IDE cable connection?

Re burning, since it will be used for video editing I feel more comfortable writing to HDD first. I've used burnproof for while but still had coasters - not too many though.

Thanks

Here is a LINK to an adapter, there are several more Highpoint, I2S come to mind. You may need to get power cables with the converters you order. My Highpoint and I2S both came with cables.

To answer your first original question #1. Your master device should always be on the end of the IDE cable with the slave in the middle. I believe it has to with data corruption.

jackschmittusa is correct with his set up and you can add a hard drive as a slave on IDE 1 or 2 for any backing up you may desire.

Look here for good info, and benchmarks on SATA setups. Hope this helped

PS I'm running Sata raid 0 with 2x 80gig 8mb Maxtors on Highpoint converters no problems to date but haven't done much testing. Here is a
link to the Highpoint converters. And here for the I2S converters. KDComputers also has SATA cables.

 

[GroundedSailor]

Thanks a lot guys for answering my Q's and clearing my doubts. I have ordered 2 SATA adapters from KD Computers and will go with your suggested config:
ide1 master = cd/rw
ide2 master = dvd
sata1 = hd
sata2 = hd

Appreciate your help.

 

[shootinyou]

good luck, keep us posted

 

[GroundedSailor]

Originally posted by: shootinyou
good luck, keep us posted

Thanks. Will do.

BTW I made a slight mistake in my orig post. The video card isMSI - G4Ti 4800SE-VTD