migrating both raid and not raid IDE to P5AD2 deluxe (using IT8212)

[Gilles Vollant]

Hello,

I've a computer with 4 year old motherboard (MSI 694D Pro).
This motherboard contain 2 standard Ultra DMA100 port and a Promise Fastrack
100 controller.

Here is the list of the drive on the motherboard:
- connected on the promise Fastrack 100 : two hard disk (60 GB each) in Raid
mirroring
- connected on the 2 standard Ultra DMA100 : a DVD reader, a DVD writer, a
200 GB disk (ultra dma 100) and a 120 GB Disk (ultra dma 100) .

This computer is to be user under Windows XP (and future version of Windows)

Can I buy an asus P5AD2 deluxe and :

- connect the DVD reader and the burner on the intel IDE port
- connect all hard disk to the IT8212.


(as I understand, the IT8212 is only for hard disk)



I want continue to have the 60 GB disk mirrored, and the 200 and 120 GB disk
as independant disk.
Is it possible ? And is it possible without reformat the disk ?

And can I boot on the 200 or 120 GB disk connected on the IT8212 ?


Of course, Sata is nice for future, but I don't want buy new disk at this
time for this computer.

 

[DaveW]

If you change the motherboard in an XP based system, then you MUST reformat
the OS harddrive and do a fresh install of the OS. Otherwise you will
suffer ongoing nasty Registry errors and data corruption.

 

[Gilles Vollant]

The 200 GB hard disk contain one 30 GB partiton with Windows and software.
Other partition on the 200 GB hard disk and all other disk contain only
data.
I'm ok to reformat only this 30 GB system partition.

But this was not my question.

 

[Rob Nicholson]

I'm ok to reformat only this 30 GB system partition.

Yes, that will generally work fine and in fact is in general a "good idea".
If you only have one large hard disk in there, only use (say) 30GB for the
operating system partition.

Rob.

 

[Gilles Vollant]

ok, but noone had idea for my real question , which is not related to
windows itself?

 

[Rob Nicholson]

Can I buy an asus P5AD2 deluxe and :

- connect the DVD reader and the burner on the intel IDE port
- connect all hard disk to the IT8212.

This one? Well, I don't don't know the board you mention and assume the
IT8212 is a SATA controller but the answer is generally yes, that's how you
connect it.

Rob.

 

[Gilles Vollant]

This one? Well, I don't don't know the board you mention and assume the
IT8212 is a SATA controller but the answer is generally yes, that's how
you connect it.

IT8212 is a RAID for Ultra dma.

My question are:
- can I mix two independant UDMA disk and an existing mirror (raid 1 on
promise Fasttrack 100) of two other disk on this controller ?
- if yes, do I need reformat the mirror ? (I suppose there is no problem
with independant disk)