Promise controller

Computer Hardware
#1

I have the following setup now,
A7V8X-X MB, Athlon 2600 333FSB, 512 2700 DDR, 120GB Western Digital, Slave IDE1, 80GB Maxtor Master IDE1, ATI VIVO card, Audigy Plat sound,
NEC 3500 Master IDE2, LiteOn 812s Slave IDE2, LiteON 52327S Not setup.80GB Western Digital in firewire enclosure.
I am not to knowledgeable about controllers, but thought I might try something, I would like to setup the following, If the controller I have will work with the hardware, The controller is a “PA133-S-1”

80GB Maxtor Master through controllercard,120GB Western Digital master through controllercard, 80 GB that is in enclosure move to slave on controllercard, NEC 3500 Master IDE1 on MB for burning DVDs, LiteOn 52327S for burning Audio Master IDE2 on MB, LiteOn 812s Slave IDE2 on MB for KProbe tests.
Or should I leave well enough alone and not mess with a good thing?! I am getting excellent DVD burns and Kprobes are consistant as the system is now. :wink:

#2

Anyone?

#3

I moved all my IDE hard discs on an external controller (Highpoint), so that I can use all 4 IDE slots of my motherboard for optical devices (and eventually set up a RAID5 array in the future), and I am happy of that choice.

Most people here say that Promise IDE cards don’t work well with optical devices, but on the contrary they work fine with HD drives. So you can give a try. Just my 0.02$.

Regards, :slight_smile:

ET

#4

Keeping the optical drives away from the Promise - the right idea.

Depending on the degre of concurrency you expect from the hard drives, it may be better to put the 3rd one with the least used optical drive, instead of Master-Slave paired on the card - if you copy between or simultaneously access those two together, you’ll lose some throughput.

Some say you should not pair HD and optical on the same cable - with modern controllers, it shouldnt hurt, though an active optical drive on the same cable will hurt the throughput more than another HD would.

#5

Hi nmpaulcp,

I agree with eltranquil on this. I have set my system up almost the same. I have my HDD’s on the Promise Utra133 TX2 controller, and all 4 optical drives on the mobo controllers. It works very well.
:slight_smile:

The only coasters I’m getting is with the newest safedisc. But I don’t think thats the controllers fault (don’t know for sure, I may try again with the HDD on the mobo controller)

Other than that, haven’t had any problems. The computer still runs quite fast and burns great using the Promise for all HDD’. Good luck!!

#6

Thanks everyone. I had read here before that the promise controllers are not very compatible with optical drives which is why I wanted to install as I said. Thanks for your comments Matth on pairing the HDs on the controller card.
I’ll try setting it up later. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

#7

Hi nmpaulcp,

I have a very simular setup on 2 nforce chipsets that I had alot of problems related to the drivers using winxp pro. The old drivers from nvidia were crap and I used the default drivers that xp supplied. The newest nforce drivers rock tho and would recomend them highly as the first thing to get your system running well…Techman