I’m running out of IDE’s ………..

PeeC,

YOu can do that set up the Drives as raid.  And add Burners and DVD drives and Zip drives as long as you have enuff IDE connections
I have my Soyo Dragon Motherboard and it has raid...
I have 4 drives on the raid.  And a Burner, DVD and two hdd's on the other IDE controllers
works fine...as well as my SCSI CD Reader...

That’s great!

I thought it’s possible, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to go and buy some hardware without getting my knickers strait first.

So what you are saying Wakeup is:

A motherboard that supports RAID can accommodate up to eight IDE devices, that is:
The RAID ports can only take HD’s, but up to four and the IDE port’s any other four IDE device.  

Now I have to decide what DVD system will be the future.

Thanks mate.
Wolf

PeeC: Well, you should check first. If the board actually has four IDE connectors on it, then you can do as Wakeup says. If it only has two, you won't. This is a fairly simple check to make.

pjknibbs,

I think he said that his board has Raid on it...but maybe I am misinterpretting his question.

Yes, the board has RAID (Promise 20265R)

As I understand, there are at least two versions of RAID on the market. Promise 20265R is one of it. I don’t know about the other version.

Both versions allow RAID 0 or 1. But only one version runes parallel with the existing IDE, which would free up IDE. The other version runes in line with the existing IDE and does not free up anything.

I don’t know what my version does, and that is the problem. So far I haven’t found any info, but I am going to dig, until I find an answer and let you guys know what’s cooking.

Thanks for helping
Wolf

If i remember correctly...I built a system with an MSI Board raid...not sure if it was the same model board as the one you had, but it had the 266 chipset.  Anyway, Raid was fine...Ran two hard drives on the raid, and then a CDrom and burner and dvd rom on the regular ide channels, worked fine...
So I would venture to say that you are ok.
try it...see what happens...Backup if you think you need to...You wont damage anything from trying anyway.
Or at least you shouldn't...unless you dont know how to hook it up.

Also, you don't have to actually run the drives RAIDed (if that's a word).  I upgraded my system from a Abit KA7 to MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU and just transplanted the drives from the primary IDE to the RAID (well two of them anyway).  I only have one drive on each RAID channel, but I believe you can add two on each.  You have to be somewhat tricky though possibly.  Add one drive to each channel, then boot up, then shutdown, and add one drive to IDE 3, then bootup/shutdown, then add the 2nd drive to IDE4.  I think if you don't do it this way the controller will try to force your drives into RAID-0, but it depends on the IDE RAID controller you have.  Mine is a Promise FastTrack-133 Lite, YMMV.

The other trick is to set your BIOS to boot from the RAID controller first, this will also ensure your drive letters don't change.

-dog*

It's entirely possible... I have 1 burner (master1), 1 dvd (Slave1), 250 Zipdrive (Master2).  The drives I have are installed in the Highpoint (Raid) ports (3 of them) of which 1 drive I use as the system drive (OS Only), the other drives are programs/games, the other drive is for my mp3s.  None of it's raided.

The board I have this on is an Abit KT7-Raid.

I just installed them all at once... and set the Primary Boot to the Highpoint Controller.  Didn't have any problems setting it up at all

Since yesterday I did some heavy reading about IDE and RAID and learned a lot, but could not find an answer to my question and that is, if I swap a HD to RAID, would that free up an IDE connection for another device?

Not being any wiser after all that I decided to do it the hard way. I backed up a 20GB HD, unplugged it from IDE, switched it from slave to master, and hooked it up via an 80 core cable to a RAID connecter. I installed the RAID driver from a floppy that came with the MB and rebooted. I enabled RAID in the BIOS and followed the instructions that came up, except the command to use FDISK. And viola, the disk was recognized with all the data available. Then I hooked up an old 2GB HD as a slave at the free IDE and that drive was recognized as well.

What I learned in the meantime may perhaps help other people as well. Here is a synopsis about IDE I found on the net.

a. IDE or ATA is the same, just a different expression.

b. Never use two IDE drives on one connection as master and slave! Use them rater as two masters on individual connections.
The reason is that if one drive goes up in smoke, it crushes the bus they are hooked on as well and therefore corrupts the other
drive to.

c. RAID does not verify data integrity in any configuration. Data integrity can only be build manually by using a separate HD only for that purpose and that is a configuration beyond 0, zero and 1, one. That means that without anyone knowing data written to the HD could be corrupted. Therefore, a bootable disk should not be run via RIAD.

This is not my brainstorm but the opinion by people of authority and they are always right according to the number of wrinkles on my forehead, because it makes sense. So I take note, for I don’t know any better and keep on reading what they have to say. Perhaps that makes me one day a wise guy too.

Thanks everyone
Wolf

PeeC,

I thought basically in my terms above? basically what you did....

however that is not true about corrupted data if you plug in two drives one as master and one as slave.
--> Cut
YOu can do that set up the Drives as raid.  And add Burners and DVD drives and Zip drives as long as
you have enuff IDE connections
I have my Soyo Dragon Motherboard and it has raid...
I have 4 drives on the raid.  And a Burner, DVD and two hdd's on the other IDE controllers
works fine...as well as my SCSI CD Reader...
--> End

This is what I said.  I know I may not have said it as eloquently.  But I did say you can do what you did.  However again I do believe you can and I have done this for many years as a computer tech.  To plug in the Master and Slave IDE drives on the same IDE channel.  My opinion as well as the opinons of some other techs, is to not chain the Drive as master and a CDrom drive as slave.  Main reason is that the access to the Hard drive will be lowered because of the speed of the CDrom drive.  It will basically run slower than normal.  This has been the practice of my PC tech job as well as the big companies I have worked for in the past such companes as Pacific Bell, US Bank, and Portland General Electric (owned my the infamous ENRON)
Plus my personal experience, since I have always had more than two hard drives, right now I have 6 hard drives in my machine.  Two 20 gig, Three - 40 gig, and an 80 gig hard drive, with a SCSI CDrom drive, and an IDE DVD rom, and an IDE 40x12x40x burner.
all working great.
Had a drive go out....on my IDE ports with a master and slave drive in the past as well as recent future and have only been localized to the bad drive at hand and not both drives.  So I am not sure where they get that idea from.  Also the Raid Array, how do you suppose they hook up master and slave drives for a Raid array?  gotta have at least two drives.  I know I know one on master raid1 and another master on raid2.  But what if you wanted or needed more space?  Then what?  

What do you think the large comanies are using when they need more space?

Anyway, my two cents worth.

PeeC,

Could you post your readings up somewhere so I can view them?  I'd like to see what they say about that.  thanks!

I dived into Google and called anything with “IDE” or “RAID”. There is more to read then you need.
I recommend the following sites.

http://www.raid.com/04_01_00.html 
http://www.promise.com/search.asp?Keyword=RAID&catalog=File&Path=&MaxRecords=50&Send=Go
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci214332,00.html

This is an MSI support site
www.msi.com.tw/support/techexpress/main.html

I installed a DVD drive today on the empty IDE, and it works just fine.

Never forget to look on the net.

Thanks
Wolf

PeeC,
I mean your findings on:

b. Never use two IDE drives on one connection as master and slave! Use them rater as two masters on
individual connections.
The reason is that if one drive goes up in smoke, it crushes the bus they are hooked on as well and
therefore corrupts the other
drive to.

I have never heard of that, and I do not follow that procedure ever.  Specially on a raid controller.  When you have more than two drives.  Why would you not want to use a master/slave setting etc.  I think that the problem presented of the crushing bus a myth.

Wakeup: I think he exaggerated. If one of the drives on an IDE channel goes down the other drive is unlikely to get corrupted--however, it is entirely possible for the failed drive to fail in such a way that the other drive on the channel can't be read either. Removing the faulty drive fixes this, but of course it's impossible to tell which is the faulty one if neither is responding!

true.  However, I just thought about it, if you set up a Raid 0, and one of the drives goes out on a Raid 0 setup then yes you will lose your data.  But it would not matter if you had it set up as master/slave or Master/master or slave/slave, if its setup as raid 0 (striping) when you lose a drive you lose it all.  Since Raid 0 is basically using both drives simultaneously writing data on both drives splitting the data up half on one drive and half on the other.

Wakeup mate,

firstly I never said it’s my opinion and secondly I never said that it applies to RAID. I don’t know if it is trough or not, however, pjknibbs’s interpretation seems to explain the outfall of one drive very plausible. I only gurgitated info that seems to be reasonable to me. If you read my post correctly, then you will find that I also run master and slave.

Your explanation that a master would be slowed down by any other devise other then a HD doesn’t find any fertile ground in my mind, for only another drive like a HD, who is very resource hungry could create a narrow bottleneck on the bus. If for instance both drives are busy due to swapping on the master and saving on the slave, then I could foresee some slowdown for both drives. If however the master is reading a CD-ROM or DVD running as a slave on the same bus, then the contest would be between a horse card and Ferrari.

This is of cause just my theoretical interpretation and I may be absolutely wrong and therefore I am waiting to be corrected. In any case, the speed of a HD is not a problem anymore in my work as a graphics artist. It used to be the limitations of RAM that could be use on a Windows machine, which necessitated the swapping of large files to a drive. But now, XP and 2000 overcome this problem by using a large chunk of RAM as a buffer.

I would suggest Wakeup to read about how RAID can- and is implemented. It’s somewhat different then you suggest.

Another question! How do you use the point system? Do you need a PhD to grasp it?

LOL

Wolf

PeeC: Actually, WakeUp is dead on the ball when he says that a non-HD as secondary drive can slow down the hard drive. The main reason is that the IDE bus is forced to use the slowest communication standard of the two devices it's attached to, so if you have an ATA-133 hard drive on the same channel as a PIO4 CD-ROM, the hard drive will be forced back to using PIO4 transfers--this will inevitably have an effect on performance.

That proves the pudd’n that one should stop wasting time speculating about things one doesn’t understand. Thanks pjknibbs! Your explanation does make sense.

The reason that I belief that a fast ATA100 or 133 is not affected by something slower on its channel is the way the data is clocked, i.e. two bit/clock cycle in comparison to the old ATA-1,2 and 3 standard.  But since the introduction of ATA/ATAPI-6, i.e. Ultra DMA-5 and 6 (ATA-100 and 133) this should not be a problem any more, even so, the whole thing is still only 16 bit wide. I don’t know the exact ins and outs of this convention, but I think I read somewhere that the integrity of two devises on the same channel is kept.

Wouldn’t it be pointless to create a standard that enables faster hard drives, in the knowledge that most people only use one drive and hook up allsorts at the same channel? Any PC that’s coming out of a shop with only one hard drive and one CD-ROM has the whole shebang always running via the same slot.

I promise, it only looks as if I am desperate to be right. LOL

Wolf

PeeC,

Sorry I wasnt suggesting that you were saying that as fact or opinion, you mentioned it earlier in your post that you read it somewhere...So I was just curious where you found that information out.  
-->Cut
What I learned in the meantime may perhaps help other people as well. Here is a synopsis about IDE I
found on the net.
-->end

Maybe you meant that for just the part A. of your comment.  But you listed a B and C as well.

I wasnt attacking you.  I just wanted to know for my own sake.  Anyway I didnt know which one it applied to the raid or non raid.  Either way, in my opinion as well as having worked as a tech for many of 8+ years have I never seen a problem hooking master/slave was all I meant.  So sorry if you took offense to what I was saying, I just wanted to get the correct information.  

-->Cut
I would suggest Wakeup to read about how RAID can- and is implemented. It’s somewhat different then
you suggest.
-->End

Hmm....What part?  All of the information was taken from the Raid sites I posted up there as well as from experience.  So I am not sure what you mean.  Since alot of it is not my suggestion but that of other technicians as well as Raid Tech Board discussion forums.  So if what I suggested isn't right, then it seems that whoever created and wrote those pages I pasted are incorrect then?  As well as having tested these myself, I must be doing it wrong?  What is the correct way?  For if I am doing it wrong I would like to correct it.  Please tell me so that I do not make a mistake with my customer computers as well as the companies in the past so I can fix their computers.  Which is funny that they have not claimed any mistakes or problems from the raid.  I also didnt set all of the companies raid boxes.  Just some, from which the other techs of those companies have set them up as well... The companies of which I worked for were Pacific Bell (Phone co)  Portland General Electric (Owned by Enron) and USBancorp (Owned by Firstar Bank).

And as far as the HDD, and another drive sides a HDD(that is slower) is a fact.  It is not something I have made up.  If I find any links I will definitely post for your information.  I do not make this crap up.  Like I said, I have been a tech for 8+ years.  And yes I do make mistakes and yes I dont always know everything.  But that is because hardware and software change every day.  And therefor making my knowledge always outdated.  

So what do you want to know about the point system?
The type of grading?  or....?  The points?  
Here is some good information from EE:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/cmtyQuestAnswer.jsp#3

Hope that answers your last question!

If you think I am speculating that is fine.  you can speculate.  I am not the absolute computer answer man.  You asked a question.  I give you the answer that I was taught and have done for years.  The computers that I have worked with at my computer store as well as the ones at Pac Bell, USBanc, and PGE have been setup with the HDD and CDRom drives on separate channels USBank uses Dell, PGE uses Compaq, and Pac Bell uses HP.  So I dunno how that works out.  Also in the past since I am running 8 variations of HDD, CDR, DVD, CDRW's, zip drive, etc etc etc;  I ran out of IDE ports, so I had mixed my hdd with my CDRW.  And my burner crapped out on me.  It would get buffer under runs.  I had to move the CDRW onto a port with anothe CDRom drive.  Really weird.  Anyway that is one example of hard ware in use that failed under the circumstances of HDD Master/ CDRW Slave.
I also had to make my CDRW Master and the CDR Slave.  If I put the CDRom as Master and CDRW slave if I did CD-CD copy it would get buffer underruns.  But i have since graduated to a Plextor CDRW drive with Burnproof and have solved that problem.

Set of instructions on how to install IDE CDRom drive.
It doesnt say that you SHOULD separate the two.  But the install is taking in to consideration of One Hard Drive and One CDRom.  And making the Cdrom Master on the Second IDE.
http://www.kingli.com/install-cdrom.htm

Again Same thing.  The suggested route is to hook the Hard drives on Primary and the CDroms on second.  It does also show the way to hook it up with HDD (master) CDR (Slave).  But never said anything about it being suggested.  When the other way was the suggested.
http://www.techextreme.com/perl/story/10780.html

The suggested is to slave it with the Cdrom drive.  Doesnt mention setting it up with the HDD.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue57/stoddard.html

This site suggested moving CDrom drive to Secondary IDE Master.  And putting HDD's on Primary master/slave.
http://www.driverzone.com/guides/hd/install/hdinstall_p2.html

Ahhh here it is:
-->Cut
Don't put your CD-ROM drives on the same cable as your hard drive unless you absolutely have to--in which case always make the CD-ROM drive the slave. CD-ROM drives also have jumpers for master, slave, and cable select.
-->End
http://bratlady.com/pcstuff/buildpc4.shtml

And again here:
Says Cdrom, DVDrom, CDRW's should generally be installed Secondary Master.
http://www.abcomp3.com/installcdrom.shtml

Anyway I hope this helps you.  I am really not attacking you.  I just want you to know that I am not making things up.  If you do not agree with the way it is done.  That is fine.  I don't expect to change your mind.  I just want the opinions/facts that I know of to be layed out on the table.  Feel free to take the information that you need/want.  If you don't want any of it that is fine too.  I am just trying to answer your questions the best way I know how.  It sounds to me as if you have been offended by me.  If that is the case I am sorry, that is not my intention.  Understand this is not a personable way to establish contact via typewritten material with no emotion or feelings.  I am usually a person who trys to be helpful.  And maybe sometimes I do not know how to type it.  But rather show by action is my way.  So I hope this information is good for you.

Hi Wakeup

I really don’t know ho to address you having chosen a name like that. It always seems to come out the wrong way. Anyway I don’t mean any disrespect and your points are just as valet as everyone else’s. As I mentioned before, I am not an expert and it was I who asked the question in the first place and sought an answer. This just spilled over into some other interesting questions and if we keep going we may end up figuring out how the universe ticks.

About the misunderstanding concerning RAID; this was not a criticism towards you, rather a difference in the interpretation. Your explanation sounded different from what I read, that’s all. I could not say what’s right or wrong for I don’t know anything about it. I do know a bit about IDE though, for it is with us since day one and out of necessity I had to follow upgrades. And I always run a master and a slave on one slot. But then I read this:

<quote> It is very important, that you only use one IDE disk per IDE bus. Not only would two disks ruin the performance, but the failure of a disk often guarantees the failure of the bus, and therefore the failure of all disks on that bus. In a fault-tolerant RAID setup (RAID levels 1,4,5), the failure of one disk can be handled, but the failure of two disks (the two disks on the bus that fails due to the failure of the one disk) will render the array unusable. Also, when the master drive on a bus fails, the slave or the IDE controller may get awfully confused. One bus, one drive, that's the rule. </quote>

You can find it here:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1 

Now I am totally confused, but excited.

Wolf

PeeC,

So any resolution here?  Do you need any more help?  or....

No comment has been added lately, so it's time to clean up this TA.
I will leave a recommendation in the Cleanup topic area that this question is:
Split pts between Wakeup and pjknibbs
Please leave any comments here within the next seven days.

PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT THIS COMMENT AS AN ANSWER!

Piri
EE Cleanup Volunteer