Im planning on getting a standalone ATA100 or 133 controller, and addiing a couple hard drives, Is this a bad idea?

[5489]

I would like to get standalone ATA100 or 133 controller and add a few hard drives for extra storage. What will the cpu usage be like? Are these reliable?

and what standalone card do you recommend?

 

[Derango]

The CPU usage would be very, very low, since the controler card takes care of all of the accessing tasks. Anything by promise is good.

 

[5489]

any second opinions?

 

[NTB]

I've got a Maxtor ATA133 controler (Really a Promise Ultra133 TX2, or so the during-boot detection says) that I recieved in the package with a 7200RPM/80GB Maxtor HDD a few weeks ago and it works great. I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in performance between it and the onboard IDE at all. The only real problem with it is that my case is now an even bigger nest of ribbon cables .

If you are going to go this route, I would get a 133 controller rather than a 100 or 66. Not so much for the added speed, since drives can't come all that close to maxing out 66 MB/sec, much less 100 or 133, but for the 133 controler's 48bit addressing. This allows it to get around the older controlers' 128GB size limit. You may not need it right away, but with drives getting bigger and cheaper all the time, it may be necessary next time you add a drive. Just a thought. On the downside, though, seperate ATA133 controllers are about twice as expensive as 100 versions - around $50 full retail. If you can find one bundled with a drive, get it that way; it's a much better deal. When I was looking to add a drive to my system, my choices were to a) buy a 40GB/7200RPM HDD and controller seperately for $150, or to get an 80GB/7200RPM drive with the bundled card for the same price. Guess which one I chose?

Nate

 

[blackhawk]

Its a good idea if you have the space on your mb, the time to set´it up and the money to buy it. Promise is the big name for a reason.
It'll offload some cpu cycles but probably not enough to notice.

 

[Dion Unroe]

If your interested I have the same card for sale as the person who replyed in your post...Maxtor ATA133 controler (Really a Promise Ultra133 TX2).

Check it out here!

Let me know! Dion Unroe

 

[5489]

on my 8KHA+ i only have ata100 ide ports. Is it possible to use the promise ata133 card as the main boot device? Is this even possible?

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: 5489
on my 8KHA+ i only have ata100 ide ports. Is it possible to use the promise ata133 card as the main boot device? Is this even possible?

Since the controller is detected seperately from the rest of the hardware, and this detection is done before an OS bootscreen comes up, I assume it would be possible to boot from a drive attached to the controller, yes. The only problem I see with this is that the controller requires drivers, like any PCI device. Not a problem if you're installing WinXP or 2k, but Windows 9x/ME I'm not so sure about. XP and 2k give you the option, prior to the actual install, to load third party SCSI/RAID drivers, and this would give you access to the Promise controller and any drives on it. I'm not sure if you can do this in '98 or ME though.

Why worry about it at all? If you've already got one drive in the system, leave that on the onboard controller and put any new ones on the Promise. Install the OS on the detected harddrive, install the drivers for the promise card after the OS is loaded, and then use the new drive for storage; that's what I did. Here is my setup, if you're curious:

Onboard IDE:

Primary Master: Western Digital 40GB/7200 RPM HDD (Windows XP installed on 3GB partition, rest used for installed programs/storage)
Primary Slave: Maxtor 15GB/5400 RPM HDD (Used solely for SuSE linux 8.0)
Secondary Master: Lite-on 24x10x40 CDRW
Secondary Slave: Pioneer 16x DVD

Promise IDE controller card:
Primary Master: Maxtor 80GB/7200RPM HDD

Nate

 

[Soulkeeper]

i got a promise ata100 raid card in my system
i don't use the raid but having the possibility to add 4 more drives is all i wanted
i'm happy with it

 

[grant2]

Is it possible to use the promise ata133 card as the main boot device? Is this even possible?

Back in the olden days ALL boot devices used to be attached to a controller card!! You punks are spoiled =)