ASUS P4P800 Deluxe - Can I use the Raid IDE connectors for regular IDE drives?

[Norman Woo]

Hi Folks

I have the P4P800 Deluxe and have already used up the Primary and
Secondary IDE slots on the motherboard. I need to add more additional
IDE drives. Can I use the PRI-Raid1 and SEC-Raid1 slots or do I need
to buy an additional ATA card? I need to add 4 more 250 Gig hard
drives for video editing (Matrox RT-X100 with Adobe Premiere Pro).

Thanks in advance.

 

[end user]

I have the same board as you do with 2 IDE HD's running on both VIA
raid channels. These are running as individual masters in none raid
configuartion. No raid driver is required to make them work.

You can also run your primary drive (C off the VIA channels.
Transfer speed +/- the same speed as the regular IDE channels.

The only problem is that your optical drives will not run off the VIA
IDE channels. These have to run off the regular IDE channels.

Locust

 

[Norman Woo]

I have the same board as you do with 2 IDE HD's running on both VIA
raid channels. These are running as individual masters in none raid
configuartion. No raid driver is required to make them work.

Is 1 the maximum you can run off each port? I thought you caould run
2 IDE drives on each port, thereby allowing 4 additional drives?

Primary IDE = 2 IDE devices (80 Gig with XP as Master, 120 Gig as
Slave)
Secondary IDE = 2 IDE devices (Pioneer A08 as Master and Pioneer A08
as Slave)
PRI-Raid1 = 2 IDE devices (2 x Maxtor 250 Gig)
SEC-Raid1 = 2 IDE devices (2 x Maxtor 250 Gig)
2 S-ATA = 2 SATA devices (2 x Maxtor 250 Gig)

Total of 10 IDE drives?

 

[Len]

I have the same mainboard and do not know a technical reason why you could
not do as you suggest. The drive controllers would have to be running in
"Enhanced" mode for this to work. Therefore you would need to be running
W2K or XP.

However, on a practicle basis I do not believe this to be a really good
idea. This is in part an issue of the PCI bus. As you continue to add
drives to your MB there needs to be increased activity on the bus to serve
each of the drives. The ICH5 SB is pretty robust, but I believe the VIA
Raid controller also uses the PCI bus to transfer data. With that many
drives, plus the NIC, plus whatever other devices you have installed may
more than saturate the PCI bus causing either lags or other significant
problems.

You also have the issue of heat and power drain on the system and PSU.
Which means more fans and more power drain. I'm sure there are cases able
to accomdate that number of drives as servers use multiple drives on a
regular basis. Most of those have dual or redundant power supplies because
of peak draw capability required.

Certainly your choice as to what you do but you might want to consider these
other issues as well.

FWIW,
Len

 

[end user]

Your info is correct. I do not however have the need to have terabites
of space.

I operate with
1- 8o gig on IDE channel 1(master)
2 - optical drives on IDE channel 2 (slave master)
1- 160 gig sata on sata channel 1 (master)
and 2- 80 gig drives (both masters on VIA channel 1 & VIA channel 2 (
none raid configuartion.
I also run 2 - 120gig HD"s using USB hi speed for data backup.

No glitch. Master (C can be on any drive indicated as master.

Testing has shown that sata drives are slower than IDE drives for data
transfer due to the IDE to sata bridge so it is not a good choice as
your master )C drive.

Don't forget that with 10 drives you will need a server style PSU to
supply the power to the drives and rest of the system.

Locust

 

[end user]

Heat would definately be an issue. Lack of cooling would cause the
drives to die. Numerous buyers of the Maxtor 1 touch stated that their
drives died within 4-5 months of purchase and that the aluminum case
was very warm to the touch.during continuous use.

On my system I have 2 - 80 mm fans pushing air on the HD's & 2 sucking
air out of the case.

You could always operate the case fans off a smaller secondary PSU
while keeping the main PSU for system power.

If you are looking for a bigger PSU check the amount of watts going to
each rail (3.3 volt, 5 volt & 12 volt) and not simply the overall
amout of PSU wattage. Do a google search for more info.

Locust