which would be faster

[cmdrdredd]

I just got a WD 200GB 8MB cache IDE drive for Xmas and it comes with a Promise Ultra100x2 PCI card. WOuld it be faster to run the drive from the PCI card or directly from the internal ATA/100 controller on my Intel 845PE chipset mobo. The mobo is a Albatron PX845PEVPro.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Unlikely that there will be any performance difference at all. The reason they include a Promise controller is because not all motherboards support IDE drives bigger than 137GB, as that was the limit of the addressing scheme of IDE. I think most current chipsets and BIOSes won't have a problem with it, as they modified the number of bits to 48 in order to allow addressing larger sizes.

The ICH4 southbridge does in fact support 48-bit addressing, found that on Asus's site.

Discovered a page on Microsoft's support system that indicates that not all versions of Windows support 48-bit addressing for ATA devices. Win2k SP2 and earlier don't for instance, and WinXP doesn't officially support it earlier than SP1, but it can be enabled without SP1, though it takes a registry modification.

 

[cmdrdredd]

crap...SP1 gives me LOADS of trouble so I'll have to hack it I suppose.

I've read that Slave driver perform a slight bit slower than Master drives. This is why I was wondering about the speed difference.

 

[Lord Evermore]

There is no performance difference on a per-drive basis whether it's master or slave. The only thing master/slave settings do is define which drive is considered "first" and which is "second" (drive0 and drive1) for OSes to be able to sort them out. When each drive is active, it is the only active device (IDE channels are only accessible by one device on the cable at any given moment).

You might get slightly better performance overall by having one drive on the Promise controller and one drive on the primary onboard connection, as there will then be no contention for control of the IDE bus. When I said there's no performance difference, I meant in the case of just one drive in the system. Separating drives so that only one device is on a cable at a time helps a little bit, especially if you're transferring files from drive to drive a lot of the time, since both drives can then be active constantly rather than switching back and forth. But otherwise, the performance lost by having two hard drives on the same cable isn't likely to be much.

If you do decide to put one drive on the Promise controller, I'd suggest your OS drive being on the onboard IDE port and a secondary drive on the Promise controller. Your OS drive is likely to get more activity, and you can avoid the PCI bus by using the onboard controller (assuming your chipset's southbridge has the IDE ports directly connected and not passing through the PCI bus, as all or most current chipsets do).

 

[cmdrdredd]

I installed it on the promise card. This will be primarily a backup so I did it this way. Thanks for the info on cable setup though

 

[psianime]

You don't really need the card unless your a hardware freak and you would like to trick out your rig with a controller card.

-psianime

 

[cmdrdredd]

no but I would like the option for more drives if I should choose to get a DVD burner of the like.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: psianime
You don't really need the card unless your a hardware freak and you would like to trick out your rig with a controller card.

-psianime

yeah i hate controller cards.
i used a promise TX2 and it was an utter POS unfortunately.

 

[cmdrdredd]

with 4 drives already on the Internal Bus(2 HDs and 1 DVD and 1 CDRW) I have little option