Using Promise controller in non-raid on P4PE

[Dewdman42]

Does anyone know if its possible to connect only one drive to the Promise
controller on the P4PE (raid option) and rather than connecting multiple
drives in raid config..just use one drive. Basically I'm looking for a way
to add a 5th IDE drive to my computer, and hopefully for that 5th one to be
using ATA133 transfer speeds. But when I got into the Promise BIOS, it
wants to setup raid configs..and I'm not sure what will happen if I setup a
raid of only one drive..

Anyone know if what I'm talking about is possible or ill-advised?

-steve

[DocD]

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Hi there, Steve...
Yes - there are several extensive strings in this newsgroup dealing with
this. Personally, I have 5 drives hanging off my system with one 80Gb
hooked up to the RAID controller parallel connector.
Steps I took...
1) FDISK and Formatted the drive as a typical IDE using one of the 845PE IDE
connectors (Don't know if this was important, but I didn't want to chance it
on the RAID controller - actually, the drive I hooked up was already full of
data written by the standard IDE connection.)
2) Install the Promise controller drivers off the CD in case you haven't
done so already (it will show up under "SCSI controllers" in Device Manager)
3) Attach the hard drive to the controller, upon next boot, the RAID utility
will recognize the drive. Simply hit "ctrl-y" to auto accept the drive
parameters and continue booting. The screen will actually say something
about RAID 0 - stripe mode, but the 20376 Promise controller suppports IDE
formatted drives as well (this was mentioned on the German Asus site).

Now here I needed to take an extra (undocumented) step. For WinXP to
recognize the IDE drive, I needed to download some Promise Drivers that were
on the German Asus site. These drivers are located at:
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/TREIBER/CONTROLLER/IDE/PROMISE/PDC20376

WinXP will put a "SCSI Drive" in device manager under "Disk Drives" - but
WinXP won't recognize the drive. Using the 'Properties" tab of the "SCSI
Drive", I updated the driver with the ones I downloaded from the German Asus
site (above) - and now Win XP recognizes the drive as a "Promise 1+0
Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device". But this device is now a fully operational
IDE Drive.

Do a search in this newsgroup for "Les Alderson" - I think he was the
originator of some of the better strings working with this...

Hope this helps...
-DocD

"Dewdman42" <Dewdman4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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[Dewdman42]

excellent info! thanks. How is the performance of the drive on the promise
in comparison to the other IDE controller in real world tests?

"DocD" <DocD@No$pam.net> wrote in message
news:3deb4922$1...@post.newsfeed.com...

[Mike Lamb]

Yep excellent info.
I've been browsing the Asus NG here because I have a Asus P4PE/L coming
Wednesday or Thursday.
While my P4PE don't have any raid on the mobo I do have a Promise TX2000
card in my Abit BD7-RAID mobo. Actually I disconnected the HighPoint RAID in
my Abit mobo because HighPoint RAID is TERRIBLE!!! I mean BAD! So I am
kind'of interested in how my hard disks on the Promise TX2000, stripe 2+0
will perform.
I'm gonna try the shortcut and see if I can my current WinXP from my setup
now. If not I guess I will be reinstalling WinXP.

Cheers,
Mike

"Dewdman42" <Dewdman4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:TRycnaqKdox...@giganews.com...

[testboy]

I have a P4PE running Win2k, two HDD off the IDE controller, works
fine. One WD HDD w/o jumper on the PATA Raid port. I get the raid
boot up, configure the disk by selecting config 1, ctrl-y, boot win2k,
load the dev drivers, even the new one from germany, go to device
manager, see "Promise 1+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device". It all
looks like it should be fine....

BUT, I cannot see the drive under any of the standard disk management
tools, like explorer, or admin disk utilities. This is an old disk, I
have no idea what was on it last or the format state. I assume it had
either a ntfs or fat32. I assumed I could use the win2k disk admin
tools to repartition and reformat once I could see the drive.

SO, under win2k, how do I actually see the drive on the Raid
controller???

regards

"DocD" <DocD@No$pam.net>

> 1) FDISK and Formatted the drive as a typical IDE using one of the 845PE IDE
> connectors

Did not do this.

> 2) Install the Promise controller drivers off the CD in case you haven't
> done so already (it will show up under "SCSI controllers" in Device Manager)

Got this.

> 3) Attach the hard drive to the controller, upon next boot, the RAID utility
> will recognize the drive. Simply hit "ctrl-y" to auto accept the drive
> parameters and continue booting. The screen will actually say something
> about RAID 0 - stripe mode, but the 20376 Promise controller suppports IDE
> formatted drives as well (this was mentioned on the German Asus site).

Did this.

> on the German Asus site. These drivers are located at:
> ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/TREIBER/CONTROLLER/IDE/PROMISE/PDC20376

Did this.

> WinXP will put a "SCSI Drive" in device manager under "Disk Drives" - but
> WinXP won't recognize the drive. Using the 'Properties" tab of the "SCSI
> Drive", I updated the driver with the ones I downloaded from the German Asus
> site (above) - and now Win XP recognizes the drive as a "Promise 1+0
> Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device". But this device is now a fully operational
> IDE Drive.

Win 2k shows the same thing.

[testboy]

Got it working. Had to do that step I skipped before (prepare the
disk on a standard ide connection). Turned out the disk was an old
Linux disk, had a bunch of partitions and such on it. Had to connect
it to a standard IDE controller, open it under drive manager, delete
all the linux partitions, repartition the drive, format the drive
ntfs, reboot. Bingo the drive is visible and ready to go under Win2k.

So now I have two HDD off the first IDE, a CD and CDRW off the second
IDE, and a single HDD IDE off the Raid controller.

I did install the german drive noted below. I'm not sure I needed to
install it but at the time I was trying a variety of things.

test...@yahoo.com (testboy) wrote in message news:<dc34454e.02122...@posting.google.com>...

[Dewdman42]

Note to everyone..I used some benchmarking tools to see if it was any
faster. Same ATA133 drive on the promise and then on the ATA100 ide
channel. It was only marginally more data thruput. A little bit, but not
enough to worry so much about...

Nonetheless, I'm using the ATA!33 promise and so far no problems..

"testboy" <test...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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