MoBo / 2 Drive combo for new DAW ???

[mark4man]

Was looking at GigaByte, Asus & Intel 955 class MoBo's over at PriceGrabber, in hopes of custom building a new digital audio workstation; & it looks like these new-tech boards (& their accompanying BIOS') only offer one IDE Channel?

In the past (& on my current machine)...the best performance for PC based digital audio recording was to run the multitracking software (SONAR, Cubase, etc.) on the primary drive/channel; & utilize the secondary drive/channel for the recording & playback of audio data.

Not knowing s_ _t about RAID...what do I do now? How would the above dual drive channel scenario be accomplished?

Thanks,

mark4man

[rond36]

The reason some new motherboards only have 1 EIDE channel is EIDE is quickly becoming legacy technology. It won't be long before you start seeing boards without any EIDE ports.

The technology that has replaced EIDE is SATA. Any new motherboard that you buy will have between 2 and 8 SATA I 1.5 GB/s or SATA II 3.0 GB/s ports. To take advantage of the new technology you will need a motherboard with SATA I or SATA II ports and SATA I or II hard drives. If you want to continue to use your EIDE drives on a SATA port there are adaptors available (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812107112).

Optical drives (CD-ROM, CD+/-RW. DVD-ROM, DVD+/-RW DVD DL+/-RW) are also migrating over to SATA.

It is possible to build a PC without using any EIDE ports. If I bought a new SATA DVD+/-RW drive (http://www.plextor.com/english/products/716SA.htm), I would not have any drives on the EIDE ports (My motherboard has 3 EIDE ports for 6 drives).

If the motherboard has RAID you don't have to use it, if it is disabled in BIOS the SATA ports should become independent SATA channels and each drive will be a master on its own channel.

[mark4man]

rond36...

Thanks.

The MoBo's I'm looking at all have that (SATA I or SATA II), but are those ports connecting the drives directed by different channels? What I'm tyring to get at is the nature of the technology...2 drives, 1 on each channel...worked great for audio recording; & I'm hoping SATA is set up the same way.

Thanks again,

mark4man

[mark4man]

rond36...

Never mind...you answered my question with your reply; & I just missed it. I was worried that the SATA channels were not true independent channels, like IDE.

Thanks again,

mark4man