Need Help With IDE Setup For ABIT KT7 RAID

[ginky4]

I have an ABIT KT7 Raid motherboard and am in the process of setting up my IDE slots. I am going to be using a Pioneer 16xDVD/40xcdrom, a Ricoh4070A CDRW, an Iomega 250 zip, and a Western Digital 40 gig hard drive. Is there any certain IDE slot that should be used for each drive? Is one better than the other? I will only be using 1 hard drive at this time. Let me know.

 

[Henry Kuo]

just make sure the hard drive is the only drive on the channel. if you connect the hard drive with other devices it will go back to ata33

 

[rockstar]

Henry, Is that the way most IDE channels work or is that just specific to the Abit KT7raid? Just curious.
Thanks,
rockstar

 

[ginky4]

Henry, I am not sure what you mean by "make sure the hard drive is the only drive on the channel" Can you clarify that for me. What is considered the channel? What IDE slot should the hard drive be plugged in to? Is it marked on the motherboard?

 

[Henry Kuo]

first of all, by channel i meant an IDE "slot" on your mobo. a channel can support up to 2 IDE devices. generally a mobo will have two channels supported by the south bridge (kt133 and i815E), therefore you can connect up to 4 IDE devices. some boards, for example ABIT KT7, have an extra IDE controller, so you will find two more IDE slots on the board, which can allow another 4 devices. (a total of 8 together with the original IDE controller).

Now from what I learned, when you put an ATA100/66 device with ATA33 devices, everything will be downgraded to run at ATA33. Currently all CDROM, CDRW, ZIP, etc are all in ATA33. hard drive is the only thing that runs at ATA100/66. That's why I said don't put anything together with the ATA100/66 hard drive (unless that's another ATA100/66 hard drive).

I personally like to put the hard drive alone as the primary master (since I only have one hdd), and put all my CDROM, etc in the other channel.

 

[ginky4]

I thought that is what you meant. I will make sure that the hard drive sits in an IDE channel all by itself even though the channel can handle 2 devices. I will use the additional IDE slots for my other drives. Thanks!

 

[Enigma]

Abit KT7-raid will recongize ide's in this order.
IDE1 upto 66ata, two devices
IDE2 upto 66ata, two devices
IDE3 upto ata100, two devices
IDE4 upto ata100, two devices

Suggested config.
IDE1 - Pioneer 16xDVD/40xcdrom - boot cdrom if needed.
IDE2 - Ricoh4070A CDRW, Iomega 250 zip
IDE3 - Western Digital 40 gig hard drive
IDE4 - Future Harddrive.

Similar to what I use, same board, similar devices. I can burn cd's while doing other task.

 

[ginky4]

Thanks for the tip. I think I will set this board up exactly like you have yours. I will leave the Hard Drive in a channel all by itself. If you have any other advice for this board, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[rockstar]

Thanks for the tips!