Adding HDD's

[R. Wink]

I currently have a PIII 1 GHz computer and want to add some HDD's to it. I have a CD, a CDRW and (2) 13.6 GB HDD's. I want
to add to more 20GB HDD's to this computer. I think that by using a HDD controller card that up to a total of (4) more drive
can be added. All of these are Ultra ATA drives. Anyone have any experience with a card good or bad?
R. Wink

 

[Mike Walsh]

Promise cards have great performance with hard drives. Keep your optical drives on the motherboard ports.

I currently have a PIII 1 GHz computer and want to add some HDD's to it. I have a CD, a CDRW and (2) 13.6 GB HDD's. I want
to add to more 20GB HDD's to this computer. I think that by using a HDD controller card that up to a total of (4) more drive
can be added. All of these are Ultra ATA drives. Anyone have any experience with a card good or bad?
R. Wink

--

When replying by Email include NewSGrouP (case sensitive) in Subject

Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

 

[MCheu]

I currently have a PIII 1 GHz computer and want to add some HDD's to it. I have a CD, a CDRW and (2) 13.6 GB HDD's. I want
to add to more 20GB HDD's to this computer. I think that by using a HDD controller card that up to a total of (4) more drive
can be added. All of these are Ultra ATA drives. Anyone have any experience with a card good or bad?
R. Wink

The Promise Ultra133 TX is the one I've got. Pretty easy to install,
as it's autoconfiguring. If it detects another controller using
channels 0 and 1 (the standard settings) as active, it will configure
itself as channels 2 and 3. When installing a new drive, you still
have to set the master/slave jumpers, but DMA mode is automatically
configured as ON by default. The real glitch I've encountered so far
is that Ahead's InfoTool (A diagnostic program that comes with Nero
Burning ROM) has a bug that will trip a reboot if it tries to query an
ATAPI device on this controller. I've encountered no other software
that does this.

Also, if you're hunting for a controller card, keep in mind that not
all of them support all IDE devices. Some controllers only support
hard drives, no ATAPI devices (CD/DVD drives, Zip Drives, etc). The
Promise one I bought does support ATAPI devices, but it does have that
one hiccup. If it's not mentioned that ATAPI devices are supported,
they probably won't. Since you never know what you'll be filling
those extra drive slots with, you might want a controller that's
capable of handling any type of IDE device.

Another thing to consider might be to get a SATA/IDE combo controller
board. Usually, you only get 1 IDE controller channel (2 devices) for
IDE, but you'll also have two slots for SATA devices. Given that
PATA-IDE devices are on their way out, it's worth considering. The
Promise SATA150 TX2plus is one such animal. I probably would have
bought this one had I known about it a few months ago.

 

[DaveW]

What are you going to do about a power supply unit with enough wattage
output and stability to run all this hardware?

 

[kony]

What are you going to do about a power supply unit with enough wattage
output and stability to run all this hardware?

??

Any decent 250W should suffice unless system has very
high-end/modern video card in it. P3 CPU based platform
uses 5V for CPU, 12V rail most taxed by HDDs is largely
unused.

 

[R. Wink]

It's already got a 400W P/S. I thought that would be enough
R. Wink

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I currently have a PIII 1 GHz computer and want to add
some HDD's to it. I have a CD, a CDRW and (2) 13.6 GB
HDD's. I want to add to more 20GB HDD's to this computer.
I think that by using a HDD controller card that up to a total
of (4) more drive can be added. All of these are Ultra ATA drives.
Anyone have any experience with a card good or bad?

I have had good luck with SIIG's Ultra ATA133 controller card.
See: http://www.siig.com/product.asp?pid=437
I use it with (3) ATA/133 hard drives, and no problems have
arisen. I chose it because it had a good "presence" in the
American market and because of the 256-byte FIFO buffers.

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

I have had good luck with SIIG's Ultra ATA133 controller card.
See: http://www.siig.com/product.asp?pid=437
I use it with (3) ATA/133 hard drives, and no problems have
arisen. I chose it because it had a good "presence" in the
American market and because of the 256-byte FIFO buffers.

*TimDaniels*

.... doesn't hurt that it's the least expensive either,
though supposedly it has lower read or write performance (I
forget which) than (Promise, Highpoint), though that isn't
going to matter with older, 20GB HDDs.

BTW, if the 680 chipped SIIG cards aren't to be used for a
RAID array but rather single drives, there may be a jumper
(or hardwired, jumper wire) that can be cut to put them into
regular ATA mode, so they'll support ATAPI, CD/CDRW/etc.
SIIG has documentation about this and one or two other
jumpers on their website, though I forget where, but a local
copy reads as follows:

"The jumper settings in this FAQ reflect what is documented
in our reference design only. Default Jumper Settings for
SiI0680 controller; JP1 IDE out / RAID in. Default setting
is "in" or "closed". "

WIth that in mind it might make the most sense for the OP
to put the two 20GB HDDs on the primary motherboard
controller, along with the CDRW on the second channel,
leaving only the (potentially slower) 1.36GB drive and the
CDROM on separate ATA card channels, though of course that
introduces the need to put the OS on one of the 20GB drives
else WinNT/2K/XP won't boot from the drive after placed on
the ATA card, but I was presuming OP would like the higher
performance of the larger drive for running the OS, cloning
the OS partition to a 20GB drive before moving the drive
over to the PCI ATA card.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

... doesn't hurt that it's the least expensive either,

The cheapest (after tax and shipping) price that I could
find a month ago by net searches was at Dell for $35,
a little less than the lowest price for Promise. The
pricing now is about the same as the prices I could find
15 months ago, too. I also found that other brands were
cheaper, but SIIG was the only one that I saw that had
the large buffers.

though supposedly it has lower read or write performance
(I forget which) than (Promise, Highpoint), though that isn't
going to matter with older, 20GB HDDs.

Could you point me to a review?

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

The cheapest (after tax and shipping) price that I could
find a month ago by net searches was at Dell for $35,
a little less than the lowest price for Promise. The
pricing now is about the same as the prices I could find
15 months ago, too. I also found that other brands were
cheaper, but SIIG was the only one that I saw that had
the large buffers.

Often they're generic branded, names like "Koutech", though
many if not all based on the reference design. Primary
difference might be documentation, which is why I ended up
at the Silicon Image website after I bought a pair of their
680 chipped cards... figured at the price I paid it'd be
handy to have an identical pair just in case one failed.
They can be had for less than $20 many places.

http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=44&a=283&f=1
Note that I linked a generic list, other non-SI cards are
also listed.

here's an example with better picture but same can be had
from pricewatch, cheaper;
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-104-214

Could you point me to a review?

Don't recall where I saw it.
Here's a review but it's not the one I saw previously,
different card but same chipset.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/cmd680.html