40GB WD HD & ATA100 CC installation

[KranitzL]

ok, here goes.. I just bought a 40gig ATA 100 Western Digital HD, and a Promise ATA 100 controller card..
my Comp is a cust. built, Asus P2B-F, orig. bios, PII 400, with 4-5 PCI slots filled, 128MB SDRAM, and WIN 98. I have 2 cd-rom drives, and 2 HD's ( 8.4 WD, and 1.2 QF) now, will the ATA100 Controller card Replace me onboard IDE channles, or add 4 more?
If it adds, should i switch my 8.4 ATA66 HD over to the controller, since my MB only supports up to ATA33?
If it rplaces, ill just take the lil 1.2 gig, and put the 40Gig in its place..
Also, i wasnt able to find reviews on the 40Gig, so if anyone has one, and a sys simaler to mine, pleassee tell me if uve had any bugs or that..
I just need to know about what installing the card will do to my sys, such as my IDE and IRQ's, and poss if ill have to partition the 40Gig.
thankies ^_^

Kranitz L

 

[Guest]

I think you should check to see if there is a bios update for your mobo that would enable it to run ATA66 and forget the ATA100 controller card for right now. Run the 40 and the 8 gig drive and pull the other one.
I'm running a WD 20.5gig ATA66-7200rpm and a WD 40.8gig, ATA100-7200rpm drive off the mobo's ide controller. Board is an early LX-series Intel board that has the Phoenix bios flashed to the P.18 bios and all works well. System architecture on these older mobo's won't work well trying to use ATA-100 anyway.

 

[Ncogneto]

Ok, I have to disagree with the above post. While flashing to a more current bios is not a bad idea it will not give your motherboard ata 100 status, this is a limitation on the chipset itself and not the bios. Now to address your first question, if you add the promise card you will gain an additional 2 ide channels allowing you to have four additional drives. However, this all depends on the fact that you have the resources available ( irq's). Ultimately, I think the best setup would be for you to install the two cd-rom drives on the primary master ide of your motherboard, one set as a master and the other as a slave. In bios disable the secondary ide of your onboard controller, freeing up an irq. Install the promise card using the ata 100 drive alone on the primary and the ata 66 drive alone on the secondary of the promise card. I would not mess with the 1.2 gig drive on the promise controller it would only slow your high performance drives down. It may be possible to have it on the secondary ide of your motherboards controller but you would have to enable that in your bios and I suspect the irq's are more valuable then the 1.2 gig of space. Bear in mind the setup I just recomended is an end result, you will first need to install the promise card in your system then load the drivers for it before changing around your drives. Also, in your bios make sure you toggle to the boot to scsi in your boot menu after you have installed the promise card and hooked your hdd's up to it.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

 

[KranitzL]

Well, I would flash my BIOS, but every time i try to download either of the 2 updates off of ASUS' FTP's, i get an Error: file cannot be found msg.. If anyone knows of another site too get these from, id appreciate it!

 

[Guest]

I agree with "ncogneto"'s remarks about bios up-dating will probably not give you ATA-100 capability on your mobo but it will help your system over-all. In my particular situation with the LX mobo the original bios dod NOT let me enable DMA, was strictly PIO-mode and that held me back to ATA-33. After flashing the bios to the latest version I was able to run DMA-enabled and according to bench-marks I get from SySoft's "SANDRA'-Pro it makes a LOT of difference between PIO and DMA mode as far as drives benchmarks are concerned.

The latest bios for an ASUS P2B-F mobo is ver.1013a dated 8/25/00 and is available on their site at:

http://www.asus.com/cgi-bin/dl.asp?filename=mb/slot1/440bx/p2b-f/bx2f113a.zip

The bios search page is:

http://www.asus.com/products/motherboard/bios_slot1.html

Hope this helps. Since you already have the ATA-100 controller card I'd stick it in and try it. It would take some swapping but you might want to try it with and without the card to see if it makes that much difference. Just be sure to use a good benchmark program and not "seat-of-the-pants" figures.

Good luck

 

[Raistlin]

I realize you are all trying to be helpful but there are somet things inaccurate, first of all ata-33 is dma
so if you only had pio-mode 4 that is 16.7meg a sec it isnt even udma, second dont fool around with disableing controllers, you dont have to that is why there is irq sharing.

What i would do,
Yank 1.2gig hdd make it a coaster or somthing,
install the new controller card, drivers etc.
after its installed good no ? in device manager
disconnect the cdrom- put the new hdd in as secondar master on your mb controller run the software(came with drive) to copy everything to that new drive (faster) make it your boot drive on mb bo channel .
Disconnect the 8.4gig.
if it boots move 40gig to primary master on the controller card.
If this still works put the 8.4gig on as secondary master on the controller card (you will need cables i hope you have enough)
note you need an ata-66cable for ata-66
now put your cdrom back on as primary master on the onboard controller,
if you have another device make it secondary master on the mobo controller.
if you dont understand this let me know.

Bored,Certified Tech

ps. please dont pick on my grammer,punctuation


also when you are done and EVERYTHING is working format your 8.4gig, you computer might get slightly confused if you dont (extra windows folder etc) not to mention wasted space

 

[RamaV]

Have to agree with Raistlins sentiment, as well as advice. People are trying to be helpfull, but i couldnt think of a better procedure then what he advised, except maybe one tidbit-id probably prefer to put the 8.4 gig on the secondary master on your mobo, and put one CD ROM as primary msater on yer MB and the other as its slave. Thats only cause i for some reason hate the idea of taxing PCIcards to much, why..dont ask me...that plus you shouldnt need to mix cables, you have the ones for your mobo controllers all setup.
You asked about similar systems, well hehe both of mine are pretty close to yours, both P2 400s and this one is on a PSBF. I only have a 10 gig WD, but its been flowing fine for awhile now. Only thing i can tell ya, unless i decide to go SCSI next (which i still may..up in the air) im definately going to go with the IBM 75 GXP. If you still have the opportunity, id say ship back the WD and grab the IBM, even for a few more bucks, its well worth it.

Rama

" He who (BLEEPS) nuns, will later join the church " Joe Strummer, The Clash - "Death or Glory"