Use RAID card to get more IDE headers?

loninappleton · Dec 25, 2009

My new Biostar motherboard has only one IDE plug.

My normal backup routine is to clone one drive to another running the Ghost prog. from the optical drive.

I have a couple of Rosewill RAID cards. Each has a red and blue header.

My questions are:

Will the RAID card function as a standard IDE header?

When setting up XP do I have to acknowledge the prompt to install RAID drives or will they be recognized as plug and play?

The instructions with the Rosewill cards are pretty sketchy. Is the red header the first one in the chain or the blue one?

Will one RAID header recognize a Master and Slave in the normal IDE manner?

I have the Rosewill disk and small pamphlet that comes with the device.

Found the User Manual. It says each plug can be configured for one Master and one Slave IDE device. However it also says if I am setting up one "Raid Set" to use one Master on each.

I do not know the lingo of RAID as far as striping etc.

I hope these questions will get me going.

DavidGP · Dec 31, 2009

Hi

Never used that type of card before, majority of motherboards I use have multiple IDE or SATA ports for my needs, but I did read the manual on that RC200 card and yes it can be used for normal IDE ATA133 operation, they do advise not to use if for optical drives, but dont say it cannot.

Yes you wll still have to install the raid drivers for this card.

Do read Question 13 in this PDF Here and full manual Here

And Promise have a non-raid card here

To your question on raid, and its lingo, then while I do run raid on my desktops in Raid0 array (which is not a true raid format) it is also known as striping and basically adds some speed to your disk read/write.

But here is a great run down on raid types http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

loninappleton · Dec 31, 2009

This is too complicated. I am burnt out on it.

Today I did a straing install of XP bypassing the Rosewill altogether.

Apparently there was still some conflict at the PCI card with ethernet and
XP could not find my homenet connection at the four port D-link switch I use.

I tried to make an old part like the Rosewill work but failed.

Then I read your PDF link and it says that the fracking HD LED jumper has to be connected for anything to work. That's way too complicated. If I ever had to reinstall I wouldn't know what anything meant (in two- three years etc) of what was done.

I pulled the card. I'm started over with this board and hoping to get it set up minimally and do clone backup from another working rig.

I'm willing to hear more suggestions, but I have to get the system working with at least one HD.

A few other reasons for the burn out:

Trying to set up one stripe disk failed: pressing F2 or whatevs just beeped at me. Setting up F5 for single disk didn't accomplish a HD recognition either.

All this because of an HD LED jumper? It's just too much.

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Use RAID card to get more IDE headers?

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