SATA RAID on A7N8X: Can those be used as REGULAR IDE?

[DDDavey]

Kind of a ridiculous question, but I'm trying to get something straight.

This motherboard has 2 IDE ATA-133 ports which will support 4 devices.
It also has 2 SATA ports for RAID if I'm not mistaken. Will those ports work ONLY with SATA drives in a RAID config? Or can they be used with SATA drives in a regular config? And finally, can regular IDE devices be used on those not in a RAID config...

Daev

 

[Vette73]

You will need a adapter to convert from Sata to the standard IDE. I know the nForce2 Abit board comes with one but I don't know ehere you can get one.

 

[bgeh]

i think the seagate baracudda V comes with an adapter.
can anyone confirm this.

 

[compudog]

SATA drives will be available soon. You do NOT need to configure drives hooked up to the SATA connections in RAID configurations, you can use them as regular IDE devices. I know ABIT has a widget they call the "serrilell." This lets you hook up standard IDE drives to the SATA controller. Don't know if this is sold separately or only with an ABIT board.

 

[randomlinh]

the adapters sell $35-$45 right now. not worth it.. Directron has one. Looks crappy tho, compared to the ones I saw on a uk website.

Just wait for SATA drives if you want to use em. I think asus should have included ONE adapter at least... grr.

 

[DDDavey]

OK thanks for the info guys. I've been waiting since '99 to build a computer, it's finally time, and I'm sick of waiting LOL. Can someone give me a link as to WTF SATA is and it's advantages etc.?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[mechBgon]

Here's a starting point: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=53

In a way, I think SATA is interesting. Hot-pluggable, for one thing, so you could hot-dock a hard drive from your work computer into your home-office computer, given the appropriate hot-swap trays and stuff. Slim little cables too.

But just one drive per cable... hmm, versus up to 14 drives per cable for SCSI, or two drives per cable for parallel ATA. Max sustained throughput on today's best IDE drives is still not anywhere close to ATA100's limits, even. If they want to boost performance, they need to start at the drive end. Where are the 10000rpm and 15000rpm IDE drives? Where are the IDE drives with sub-6ms seeks? It's not impossible to make one! Ok, you are going to give away capacity, that's true. Two-seat Ferrari versus four-door BMW 5-series... *shrug*

Let me ask you this, what do you need more than two IDE drives for anyway, with drives available in such high capacities these days?

 

[randomlinh]

But just one drive per cable... hmm, versus up to 14 drives per cable for SCSI, or two drives per cable for parallel ATA.

Yeah, kind of a downfall.. if it were to replace ide, you'd need at least 3-4 channels on the mobo (drives get cheap, more space is always nice to have )... that's 4 cables instead of two. But at least they're skinny.

Where are the 10000rpm and 15000rpm IDE drives? Where are the IDE drives with sub-6ms seeks? It's not impossible to make one!

i don't want my case to catch on fire

 

[mechBgon]

LOL! They don't run that hot anymore. My 15000rpm Cheetah is barely warmer than room temperature (granted, it's in a fan-cooled bay in an Antec case, with a quiet low-rpm 80mm fan).

 

[neumonic42]

You should be able to use the SATA as a regular controller (no raid). But I'm not 100% sure, I havent tried it. You can use IDE drives on the SATA controller. Abit sells SATA to IDE adapters for $25. I'm using them in my rig and they work fine. Here is the link if you are interested.

SATA to IDE Adapter