Hard drive setup with controller cards

I currently have two hard drives, 80gig and 20gig, that run fine. I am going to purchase a 300gig hard drive (which will be the main bootup drive and use XP Pro w/SP2 so it will read it fine), but my motherboard doesn't support a drive that large. So, I am using a Maxtor PCI ATA133 controller card that came with the 80gig I got 2 years ago. I read here:

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

towards the bottom, that my controller card should work for the 300gig. My question is, how do I set it up? I've never used a controller card before.

The card has 2 IDE slots. For IDE devices, I want my CD burner, the 300gig, and the old 80 and 20 hard drives. As of now, all run from the IDE controllers on the motherboard. Now, I want to add in the controller card for the 300gig (and have the 300gig become my boot hard drive). How can I do that, but maintain the other IDE drives?

Is it simply just plugging in the PCI card and hooking up the 300gig as master, or do I need to do some other configuring?

 

Anyone?

 

Well, I won't be back here for help again.

 

First welcome to Major Geeks, secondly be patient with getting replies from people as we are not on a payroll, if others are then Major Attitude own me big time!
Kidding aside, welcome again and to address your question I am going to re-create your setup and if it is correct then suggestions/advises will follow, ok?

You will be using a new ATA-133 Controller card along with a new 300GB HD you just got which will be your boot drive (main drive where OS will be installed at and where the system will boot from) additional as a Slave Drive you will have a CD Burner on the ATA-133 controller card. You want to keep your existing 2 HDs (80GB and the 20GB ones) connected to the mobo. I am assuming that is how they are already connected to the mobo since you decided to use the the ATA-133 Controller Card for the new 300GB HD?
Here are some important facts about drives over 137gb and what you would need to make them work:
1) ATA-133 connectors to be present (either on the mobo or on the Controller card connected to a PCI slot)
2) Mobo BIOS support, an update might be needed for the BIOS to support HDs over 137GB.
3) An Operating System that wholey supports that size: WinNT w/sp4, Win2K w/sp3 and XP w/sp1 even Win98se with necessary system updates but would not make too much sense of using a Operating System based on FAT32 file system.

My questions:
~ You are using either the 80GB or the 20GB drive as your boot drive right? Do you need to keep them as they are or do you want to wipe them out too?
~ You are going to have approximately 40-50Watts more getting sucked out of the PSU, will it be able to handle the additional load? (300GB HD-25/30Watts and the Controller card-10/15Watts)
~ Is the ATA-133 Controller card backwards compatible for ATA-33 for you to be able to use the CD-RW drive connected to it?

My suggestion:
~ Connect the 300GB drive to the controller card with jumpers on 'Master' position. Connect either of the other HardDrives to the controller card as 'Save'. Connect the CD-RW as Master to the IDE port on the mobo and the other HardDrive as either 'Slave' or 'Master' again on the mobo.
It make more sense to connect a ATA-66/100/133 drive to an ATA-133 controller card than an ATA-33 device such as the CD-ROM/RW driveeven though the controller may support it.

 

Thanks for the reply. I just keep bumping it up after my thread got to the second page. I'll try to be more patient.

Let me try to explain more clearly what I am trying to do:

I am going to get a 300gig which I will be using as my startup drive and it will have XP w/SP2. My current BIOS (and even with the most current flash) will not support a drive that big, so I have a Maxtor ATA133 PCI card that came with my 80gig from 3 years ago. Right now, the 80gig is my main drive, and I have a 20 as a slave. I also have a CD on channel 2. Currently, everything uses the IDE controllers on the motherboard.

Like I said, I want the 300 to be my main drive. I want to have the 80 and 20 as they are, no format. The card has 2 IDE channels. The 300gig must go on the card.

Could I just simply set the 300gig to Master on the controller on channel 1, and leave the rest as they are? I also see what you are suggesting, 300gig be master on the card, the 80 slave on the card, 20gig as master on Motheroard channel 1 and CD slave on channel 1 motherboard?

How would my system know to boot up with the 300gig? I've never used a controller card before so this is a bit confusing.

Could I use up to 8 IDE devices with this new setup?

Again, thanks for your post.

 

Hello again (been extremely busy so pardon the gap in reply),
Key points:
~ any HD over 137GB needs a ATA-133 connection on the mobo (ATA-33/66/100 would not suffice)
~ Motherboard/BIOS support
if the 2 above doesn't exist, then using a ATA-133 (PCI) controller card would be adequate.
~ An OS that supports a Drive/Partition over 137GB
~ a 40-pin/80-wire IDE cable.

The reason you want 300GB Drive on the controller card is for above obvious reasons, secondly, you wanted it as the Boot Drive, then the jumper has to be set to Master and once you configure your BIOS to boot to UDMA/SCSI card (whichever is the avail. option) then it would become your boot drive with the presence of a valid OS installed on it. It doesn't matter if you leave the 80GB and the 20GB drive the way they are or change their jumper positions (Master-Slave). But since at least the 80GB one is bound to be an at least (UDMA)ATA-100 Drive it makes sense to connect it to the controller card to take full benefit of the data transfer speeds also not to forget some ATA-133 controller cards are not ATA-33 compatible.

So;
~
~ Change BIOS boot order configuration so that the system boots to the CDROM drive first (assuming you have a bootable WindowsXP CD).
~ 300GB on the controller card as Master.
~ 80GB on the controller as Slave (or as Master on the mobo connector)
~ 20GB on the mobo either as slave to the 80GB or to the CD-ROM*

*if this is a plan CD-ROM drive then make set it as a Slave but if it is a CD Burner I'd recommend setting its position as Master as most burners function better configured as Master and DMA enabled! Also considering some mobos not working fine with CDROM drives selected as the first drive yet they are configured as Slave....
Anyhow, pay attention to the BIOS boot settings, make sure you disable VIDEO RAM cacheable and System BIOS settings on the Advanced Chipset features page or depending on your type of BIOS
Also if there is a 'Ultra DMA mode' make sure it is enabled....these are all I can say for now.

Tips: When you boot to the XP CD and start the installation, remember to pick NTFS as the File System for all partition created over 31GB (XP installation wouldn't even give you the FAT32 as an option if the partition is bigger than that anyhow but in case if you use a 3rd party partitoning program keep that in mind). Since the drive is brand new you could choose 'Quick Format' type to make the formating process faster without causing any problems. After the OS is fully installed on the new drive, you could change the boot order to the UDMA Controller/SCSI card option (if one exist), as well as the 2 'cacheable' entries that I mentioned disabling a little earlier....
Good Luck and let me know if you have any additional questions.

 

Thanks for your post.

I put the drive in, and have the XP CD. I changed the boot order to Floppy, CD, SCSI. It boots with the XP installation. But it's having trouble finding my hard drive.

It will only accept a floppy disk, not a CD, so I copied the drivers to it, but it refuses to work. It says Windows already has this, so I hit ok, but then it tells me it can't find anywhere to install it. (as of now, I have just the 300 hooked up, not the 80 or 20).

I'm stuck here, it doesn't seem to want to load the controller card. During startup, the card loads, and I see the drive size 279gb, so it's working there, but XP setup refuses to use it.

 

More specifically, when I do it the first time, I get the Windows already has this message. But if I do it again (and it doesn't work so I need to), I get the:

"File \WinXP\Ultra.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2113 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c"

And then it just keeps doing that, not recognizing my drive.

 

Well, I got the 300gig to work fine alone, on the controller card and installed the OS fine.

Now I want to add my 80 and 20. I have them set to my motherboard channel 1 as master and slave. Now, when my system boots, it goes to my 80gig, not the 300. I have in BIOS, the boot order set to: Floppy, CD, SCSI, but it goes to the 80 on the motherboard...

 

I apologize, I can not follow even my own posts (this week it is insane)...
Anyhow even though it was on my mind after typing so long I forgot the most important thing:
When using a controller card, it is foreign to XP during the installation and it would need the drivers for the controller card prior to installing the operating system files.
After booting to XP, it starts the installation process but if you look at the bottom of the screen, it will be displaying a message stating "Press F6 if you need to install SCSI drivers..etc" and you have to press F6 at that moment then a little later it will ask for the drivers (using the floppy disk!) so you should have the drivers on a floppy if not you would need to copy them to a floopy, when prompted enter the floppy and hit S to specify, but after placing the floppy disk and hitting Enter it should automatically see the drivers and list it on the screen as well....then continue on with the installation.
I also didn't clarify, you should have all the HardDrives connected...that way you would have known if the 300GB drive was the System Partition/Drive (where boot files are) or not. also in BIOS the boot order should be SCSI first and if you installed the controller card's drivers as I mentioned earlier it would have worked....
see if these notes make sense and helps out...let me know.