GA-8IEXP Raid

Hi.

I have this board but as yet not used the raid capabilities. At the moment I have 1x120g WD 7200rpm HDD on the IDE. Are there advantages in using the raid as apposed to IDE connections. Is it just a matter of connecting the the raid socket rather than the IDE?

Sorry if I'm a bit dim on this.

Hi!

I am using these boards, too. I prefer to connect hard drives to the promise controller which can be used as a normal IDE controller or as a raid controller. you can change this option in the MB bios.

Hard drives connected to the Intel IDE controller will not work at DMA modes when you are in DOS or when Windows starts. The intel controller can only work in DMA mode when an intel driver is loaded in windows or in other operating systems.

Hard drives connected to the promise controller work immediately in DMA modes after the controllers bios is loaded.

So, to gain performance in MS-DOS or starting Windows, you should connect the hard drives to the promise controller.

Windows should boot without problems after switching the disk to the other controller.

I have found these problems with the onboard intel controller while restoring or creating DriveImages from disks connected to the intel controller while in MS-DOS. Its not half as fast as when the disk is connected to the promise controller. In Windows there are no significant differences.

Greetings,
Timo

Thanks for your reply.

So I can just connect to the raid socket & it will operate better than if plugged into normal IDE socket? I don't really need the raid capability yet so would I notice any difference?

Thanks.

Hi!

Yeah, that's how it works! But before connecting the drive to the IDE controller activate it in the BIOS an select ATA mode, not RAID mode. Then start windows and install the drivers when prompted from the motherboards driver cd.

After driver installation you can connect the drive to the promise controller.

Thats all!
Ed