Raid controllers on mb's don't double as regular IDE channels ?

[TheGreenGoblin]

I was working on an Asus P4B 533 E at work today and figured i'd put the client's HDD on the Promise channel but after booting up the machine and seeing a raid array created automatically along with reading the manual a cpl of times and playing around with some jumpers it seemed to me like the Promise Raid controller on the Asus P4B 533-E can only work in Raid mode. Can anyone confirm this for me ?

If this is the case , have mobo manufacturers been shipping boards with controllers like these for long ? I thought it was a given that these Highpoint or Promise controllers could double as normal IDE channels .

 

[Jugernot]

Well I can tell you my ATA100 highpoint raid controller doesn't support anything other than ATA hard drives. NO atapi drives are supported such as CD, CDRW, ZIP, etc...

In my case, a BIOS flash a year ago killed my support.

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

Ya , I was aware that some of the Raid/IDE controllers out there had no support for ATAPI devices , but no support for hard drives in non raid mode ? On my Asus A7V 133 there's a jumper to switch them from Raid to normal IDE channels , a similiar jumper on the P4B 533 E , when switched , completely disabled the channels , period. Thx for the reply though.

Can any P4B 533-E owners out there confirm this ?

 

[gaidin123]

I don't know about that specific board, but in general the onboard RAID controllers only support hard drives and most of them allow you to attach them in RAID or non-RAID (ie normal) modes. Some manufacturers cut costs and get the RAID-only controllers which, imho, is a waste...

I only can think of Promise controllers as having RAID only versions. Anyone know if you can assume that if Highpoint onboard RAID, then it can be used for normal IDE drives? My old KT7-RAID uses a highpoint controller that lets you use non-RAID drives.

Gaidin

 

[THUGSROOK]

there is a couple of hacked bioses out there for that or....

you can use a bunch of 1 drive raid arrays.
install 1 drive at a time.
setup that 1 drive as an array.
install 2nd drive.
setup 2nd drive as an array ~ delete any "false" arrays made automaticly by the bios.
do the same for a 3rd and 4th drive.

HTH

 

[ShinSa]

I built couple of systems around ABIT KR7A-RAID and ASUS A7V266A. Both allow using RAID controllers as Extra IDE channels.

I think you just got a sour deal.

 

[NesuD]

i have done this by simply creating an array with a single drive. on more than one board this has worked for me.

 

[rickon66]

I am running an Abit TH7II-Raid with a DVD drive on one channel of the Highpoint raid and a CDROM on the other. I know that this sounds like a waste, but I never could get the raid array to work for more than a week(I got tired of re-installing WINXP)