Highpoint RAID ATA100 or ATA133?

[Astronut]

Given that it's for 2x40GB IBM60GXP's which are ATA100 drives,
which of these would you peeps get?

Highpoint RocketRaid 100 - 2 channel ATA100 RAID PCI card
38.78

Highpoint RocketRaid 133 - 2 channel ATA133 RAID PCI card
65.80

Both cards have idenitical RAID features and look identical but look at the difference in price :confused:

Is it really worth getting a card that supports ATA133 when the only ATA133 drives available, AFAIK, are Maxtors? I'm not likely to ever buy a Maxtor so I really don't see the point of an ATA133 card. What do you peeps think?

[Mike360000]

Just to make a long story short, I had terrible problems with my Abit BD7 raid when I tried to go to ata 133s. Low benchmarks across the board, drives wouldn't work well mirroring and generally tedious to even try and tweak.(I ended up reinstalling WinXP because of so many problems. And the WinXP I started out with was only a few weeks old!)

I solved the problem, pronto, by getting a Promise TX2000 raid card. Glad to say, it was one of my better computer decisions. Needless to say, I won't be buying anymore mobo onboard raids, especially High Point of any type!

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Astronut]

When you say you went to ATA133 do you mean you bought 2 (or more) ATA133 drives (Maxtor's?) to run with the onboard RAID of your BD7? Isn't the onboard RAID of an Abit BD7 a Highpoint ATA100?
I guess an ATA100 RAID card (or onboard) isn't totally compatible with ATA133 drives then. I'd go further and guess that an ATA133 RAID card probably isn't totally compatible with an ATA100 drive although all the blurb suggests that an ATA100 drive can be fitted to an ATA133 card - the cards are backwards compatible.

I'm leaning towards getting the cheaper ATA100 card for my IBM's.
Why are we consumers suckered into buying stuff just because it has bigger numbers? :(

[Mike360000]

Originally posted by Astronut
When you say you went to ATA133 do you mean you bought 2 (or more) ATA133 drives (Maxtor's?) to run with the onboard RAID of your BD7? Isn't the onboard RAID of an Abit BD7 a Highpoint ATA100?
I guess an ATA100 RAID card (or onboard) isn't totally compatible with ATA133 drives then. I'd go further and guess that an ATA133 RAID card probably isn't totally compatible with an ATA100 drive although all the blurb suggests that an ATA100 drive can be fitted to an ATA133 card - the cards are backwards compatible.

I'm leaning towards getting the cheaper ATA100 card for my IBM's.
Why are we consumers suckered into buying stuff just because it has bigger numbers? :(

Yes I had 2 Maxtors D740Xs ata133s 40 gigs running together in a raid. I also had a third for my mirror, that was seperated, not running on the same controller.

And no, the Abit BD7 raid was not ata 100, it was ata 133. I have also, in testing, had no problems running my old Maxtor ata 100 HD either on the controller. Really it High Point Technologies that has the problems. There were other threads here where people were complaining of HPtechnologies raid problems on their Abit mobos. Boot problems, WinXP not saving the Go Back feature, and poor performance.

For no more than the price of the Promise TX2000, I'd go ahead and spend the little extra money for the peace of mind. And you can always move it to your next mobo or computer when you want to without having to buy a mobo with onboard raid, and then getting something like the HighPoint Raid, that you definitely do not want!

I had used Promise controllers long before I ever had Abit mobos, and only started using HighPoint when I got my first Abit mobo. (I was using Promise controllers back in the early 1990s.) I'll say this for sure, HighPoint Technologies has never seen the day they were as good as Promise. There is just that much difference!

And I would agree with you that most of this stuff is just ripoff's or over-statements and over-hype using numbers. I would say it has been my experience that ata 133 HDs offers no speed increases over ata 100. I only went to ata 133 because I needed my old Maxtor ata 100 HDs for other purposes, plus one of them had developed a case of bearing whine. I had a good deal on the ata 133 D740Xs, so I got them (3 of'em.)

Actually my old Maxtor ata 100s ran pretty decent on the HighPoint Raid, but I still had other issues with that HPT raid controller. Issues that still presist to some extent, unless there has been a BIOS update from HPT in the last month or so.

You can read the main thread I was posting in concerning all this here:
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=96724

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[shadowdr]

one thing for sure if you have the highpoint drivers 2.31 or 2.32 the file hptpro.sys in win/system32/drivers must be deleted in winxp,should be deleted in win2000 and busmaster drivers should be updated to use microsofts.scores may not change at all but all hd corruption will be gone.

[DManeKid]

just to let you know my onboard raid is ata 100 and the maxtor drives are 100/133 so i think they can use both (mine works fine and i get good scores)