Promise Ultra100 TX2 Controller

[voltaic]

P3 866mhz
384mb RDRAM
40gig 7200rpm Primary Master
10gig 5400rpm Primary Slave
48x CDROM Secondary Master
Floppy Secondary Slave
32mb Geforce2
SBLive!
Windows 2000 Pro

I'm planning to buy a new hard drive for my computer. I currently have a 40gig Maxtor, and a 10gig Western Digital Caviar. The larger one is 7200rpm, and the other one is just 5400. In addition they both are ATA66.
I heard good things about Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 60gig, and I think the price is rather low too. So I'm considering to buy it soon.
One thing that makes me worry is the data rate. Barracuda is an ATA100 drive, and since the controller card is about $30 it may be a good idea to purchase it with the drive.
I am not really familiar with hard drive manufacturers and all, so should I buy a Seagate?
And is purchasing a Promise ATA100 card worth it?
Can somebody explain to me how does this ATA100 controller work? Does it add another IDE channel, or will I have to remove my old 10gig drive?

One more thing http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
When I purchase a new drive I'll be upgrading to Windows XP Pro too. And I'll reformat both of my hard drives, everything is already backed up.
Will the interface speed make any difference when installing the OS, should I install it on the old ATA66 drive or the ATA100 one?

[mjc]

Yes, it will add another(or two IDE) channel(s), if you have open IRQs. Yes, you should put the new drive on the the new card, except for the install, sometimes windows will have a problem installing to a drive on a controller card.

Will it make a difference, probably not. Most of the time an IDE device cannot sustain that high data rate. It really is just a burst rate.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[voltaic]

But I'll still be able to keep my 10gig hard drive right?
Is Seagate a good brand? Any suggestions on which one to chose?

[iisbob]

By default common motherboard design's only include 4 EIDE controller's; that's y you need to use an addin card to gain another 4 { this is of course not true of RAID boards-but that's another story }.

You do not have to remove your drive(s) to install another one if you use the addin card.

By the way, why do you have your floppy as slave on the secondary ide? Floppies have their own ide controller.

Seagate is a good brand, tho i prefer Maxtor & Western Digital.





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iisbob

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful. -- Mark Twain.

[voltaic]

My bad.
Secondary slave is not used.

As I said before I do own a Western Digital and a Maxtor drive, and I did not have any problems yet. The reason I'm thinking about seagate is that I read many wester digital drive failure stories. In addition Seagate claims to produce the most quiet drives, at a relatively cheap price. I'm not sure if any of this is true or not.
My Maxtor sounds like a jet engine btw http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

[saphalline]

I wouldn't try installing Windows to a hard drive on a separate IDE card, but a RAID IDE card would work as they support booting. Just change a few BIOS boot options after installing the RAID card and it should work. I only mention this because I believe the TX2 is a RAID card, but you might want to check that.

It's worth messing around with this if you want to use the ATA/100 Seagate drive as your primary hard drive because it's the newest and most "advanced" in terms of features. Worst case scenario: it doesn't work and you end up using one of your existing drives. This isn't so bad because you have everything backed up and it would only cost you maybe 2 hours max.

Seagate is still good, but they recently sold their hard drive division to Maxtor (which means if you buy a new Maxtor these days there's a chance you'll get a Seagate model instead). Just a little computer politics, makes little difference, both companies make good drives.

[iisbob]

I wouldn't try installing Windows to a hard drive on a separate IDE card

?

Addin PCI ide cards support booting/installation of Windows just fine, they will be assigned the generic ide controller drivers until you update them-if you remove the card and use the onbaord ide contollers, then window's will detect " new hardware " and will install the correct drivers for the controllers.

Only problem's i've ever run into using addin's are emulation CD'S won't work-they have to be actual bootable CD's-not copies of floppies burnt to a CD to emulate a floppy.



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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

[saphalline]

Originally posted by iisbob:
Addin PCI ide cards support booting/installation of Windows just fine

My bad, I thought they didn't unless they were RAID.

"Ignore the bird; follow the river!" - Village Elder, Willow

[mjc]

I have seen a couple of boards where the installation of windows has problems when done on an add-in card, but after the install is done the drive can be switched over to the card and it will boot just fine from then on...which is probably just a driver issue, like the install not recognizing the add-in card.

I thought it was Quantum that Maxtor just bought....??

Seagate is primarily hard drives......

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.