Help with fitting 3rd hard drive on A7V8X please

[Peter]

To start with I am not exactly inexperienced as I have built four PC's
using Asus boards, but I have only ever fitted two hard drives and have
never entered the realms of learning about SCCI or Raid whatever. I am
OK with fitting simple IDE hard drives and that is where my experience
ends.

I needed a third drive on my A7V8X so bought a PCI controller card (non
raid version) fitted that with its software and XP recognises it.

I tried to run my current two hard drives off its primary connection and
they would get recognised on boot up.

I put them both back direct off the motherboard and put the new drive
(as master) running off the new controller card and that works OK and I
can use the third drive.

Is that the way it should be? I thought all three might run off the new
controller?

The other strange thing (to me at least) was that when I used IBM set up
disk, it recognised the new hard drive (running off the controller) as a
SCCI drive - is that right?

XP then formatted it OK and it works, so I suppose everything is OK.

The only strange thing is that if I check "My Computer" all the disks
display after a while (the serhlight comes on which it never used to),
and if I try to change the drive (to write to) in another programme, it
takes about 30 seconds to display all the drives available - which seems
a very long time?

Any input greatly received, hope this is the right group to ask in?

Regards,

 

[Lil' Dave]

An add-on PC card that is used for the interface for IDE hard drives is
referred to as pseudo-scsi.
Little secret. The more controllers added, and hard drives added to those
controllers, the longer it will take to INITIALLY take windows explorer to
account for the contents of those drives.
Once accounted for, there should not be a time delay access problem. This
is typical of 95/98/ME/NT systems. If during bootup, if provided time
before logging in, Win2K/XP will do this as part of the bootup process. So,
there will be no delay in XP under that condition.

If you want to physically see this in XP boot process, you need the
following: a LED that lights up when the controller card is accessed.. Have
two such LED indicators. One for a SCSI card controlling two hard drives,
and one for a Promise controller card controlling two hard drives. Delay
logging on when the XP boot screen comes up. XP will, after a moment,
access and account for all hard drives. The LEDs will light off when each
card accesses its hard drives..
If you don't allow the delay, XP will act similar to 95/98/ME/NT and delay
when it accounts for the contents of each hard drive connected to a separate
controller card.

XP should recognize a hard drive connected by a controller card. You have
to install the driver for the controller card first, if XP can't see the
physical hard drive.

If you're referring to what XP "sees" on the 3rd hard drive in windows
explorer, this only shows formatted partition information. The hard drive
involved has to have a partition created and formatted.

Simply moving a bootable hard drive and another from your onboard ide
connection to another controller is not advisable for usage.

 

[D]

Just my thoughts, I'd have thought it better to have yr primary disk
connected to mobo and any extra disk on the card.
If a delay accessing the card connected disk I'd have thought it down to the
card controller

 

[Peter]

Hello Lil' Dave,

An add-on PC card that is used for the interface for IDE hard drives is
referred to as pseudo-scsi.

That is a relief, now I can rest at night

Little secret. The more controllers added, and hard drives added to those
controllers, the longer it will take to INITIALLY take windows explorer to
account for the contents of those drives.
Once accounted for, there should not be a time delay access problem. This
is typical of 95/98/ME/NT systems. If during bootup, if provided time
before logging in, Win2K/XP will do this as part of the bootup process. So,
there will be no delay in XP under that condition.

There was a huge delay initially (XP) but it now seems to have speeded
up somewhat

If you want to physically see this in XP boot process, you need the
following: a LED that lights up when the controller card is accessed.. Have
two such LED indicators. One for a SCSI card controlling two hard drives,
and one for a Promise controller card controlling two hard drives. Delay
logging on when the XP boot screen comes up. XP will, after a moment,
access and account for all hard drives. The LEDs will light off when each
card accesses its hard drives..
If you don't allow the delay, XP will act similar to 95/98/ME/NT and delay
when it accounts for the contents of each hard drive connected to a separate
controller card.

Understand now.

XP should recognize a hard drive connected by a controller card. You have
to install the driver for the controller card first, if XP can't see the
physical hard drive.

No problems there.

If you're referring to what XP "sees" on the 3rd hard drive in windows
explorer, this only shows formatted partition information. The hard drive
involved has to have a partition created and formatted.

All that had been done but it *initially* took a long time to display
each icon (with the searchlight showing it was looking for them) but
after a couple of reboots, it now displays them instantly, more relief
for me

Simply moving a bootable hard drive and another from your onboard ide
connection to another controller is not advisable for usage.

Understood now, many thanks for fully explaining the processes for me.

Regards,

 

[Peter]

Hello D,

Just my thoughts, I'd have thought it better to have yr primary disk
connected to mobo and any extra disk on the card.
If a delay accessing the card connected disk I'd have thought it down to the
card controller

All fine now D, thanks for your input.

Regards,