Best IDE add-on board (PCI slot)?

Radboy

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Hola.

I have a friend who needs more than 4 IDE devices. He's not a SCSI type of guy. What is the best IDE add-on board out there (PCI slot).

He currently has 2 HDDS, a CD-ROM and a burner. He wants to add another hard drive (or two).

Any insight appreciated.

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Tannin

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With a vast lack of experience in this area, I must admit to being pleasantly surprised at the ease of use my Promise ATA-100 cards have provided. I only ever use them for very basic stuff - essentially plugging lots of different drives into when I want to partition, erase, or test, but they work just fine.

I have owned just two of them: the first was bought, at Buck's suggestion I think it was, to pop into my elderly 6x86MX board that we use for testing hard drives after the 32GB BIOS limit in that board started to become difficult to live with.

wall.jpg


Mostly they just work under DOS or 98 in DOS mode, but we sometimes do full installs with them, though never actually bothering to load any drivers. So the finer points of software compatibility are something I can't comment on. As for the hardware side though, so long as it's a hard drive that I plug in and not one of the unsupported other IDE devices (such as optical drives, which you probably need the drivers for), they work with everything and anything.

The second one I bought because to plug the first one into that particular ... ahh ... system ... I pulled the metal mounting bracket off it. And then one day, against my better judgement, I borrowed it to test some stupid box of pox that was in the workshop for repair or testing, and essentially being an extrememely stupid and careless sort of person, and not having the bracket to remind me of the correct orientation, I plugged it in backwards. So I had to buy another one.

Then I thought - oh well, WTF? I'll send it off and see if they laugh and tell me where to stick it, or maybe replace it. They replaced it, so then I had two. :wink: I did feel a moment's guilt over that, but decided it could be my small blow for justice, freedom, and revenge on behalf of Santilli.
 

blakerwry

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that is a terrible looking motherboard btw....


I would also recomend the Promise line of cards... I have bought a FastTrack66 (raid capable, HDD only controller) and it worked great for the year or so I used it. I have since been using an onboard promise chip (fast track 100 lite) It too has worked great, again only for HDD use.


Promise's RAID controllers only support HDD's.. however Promise also offers ATAPI/IDE controllers. This would be the promise Ultra66, and Ultra100... I'm sure they have a 133 version out now as well.

The ultra66 cards are inexpensive, work well, and are capatible with all versions of windows and are now supported in linux. The fastTrack cards also work well, but I don't think they are supported in linux yet.

I have heard of a few cases where some optical drives did not work in DMA mode using the promise cards... but I don't know much about that myself. Most people recommend running optical drives on the mobo controllers as a solution.
 

Handruin

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blakerwry said:
that is a terrible looking motherboard btw....


I would also recomend the Promise line of cards... I have bought a FastTrack66 (raid capable, HDD only controller) and it worked great for the year or so I used it. I have since been using an onboard promise chip (fast track 100 lite) It too has worked great, again only for HDD use.


Promise's RAID controllers only support HDD's.. however Promise also offers ATAPI/IDE controllers. This would be the promise Ultra66, and Ultra100... I'm sure they have a 133 version out now as well.

The ultra66 cards are inexpensive, work well, and are capatible with all versions of windows and are now supported in linux. The fastTrack cards also work well, but I don't think they are supported in linux yet.

I have heard of a few cases where some optical drives did not work in DMA mode using the promise cards... but I don't know much about that myself. Most people recommend running optical drives on the mobo controllers as a solution.

Yup the 133 promise cards exisits, I installed one in my dad's machine a few months back. I did have some issue with CD-ROM drives attached to it. In the end I had to have him run his CD-ROM & CD-RW off of the built in ATA 33 controller so that the promise card would boot. I didn't understand it, I made sure the cab;es and jumpers were correct, but this was the only way. This was a 133 non-raid card.
 

Mercutio

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The best add-on IDE cards are almost certainly made by 3ware.
There are a couple of problems with many of the add-in IDE boards on the market. One is that ATAPI support is iffy at best. The second that the low-end cards all have a pretty shoddy reputation (ask Santilli or, IIRC, CougTek).

If all you need are extra ports for hard disks, anything that's out there will more than likely work just fine. If your needs include ATAPI support, you've got a bit of a longer search, and if you're doing IDE RAID, I can only say that you probably don't need to, and if you do, you owe it to yourself to buy something better than Promise or HPT.

If you're doing Promise, make sure you load only the newest drivers, or none at all. Older drivers for their Ultra66 and 100 products were atrocious.
 

P5-133XL

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The BEST is definately 3ware. I've had alot of experiance with promise and I assure you they have their share of problems. However, for cost-effectiveness and reasonable reliability Promise is a good choice.

If you start doing unusual stuff with your promise card then they start becoming highly problamatic. Unusual is classified as Atapi, multiple promise cards, duplexing controllers using software raid, mixing Promise with another add-on IDE controller like high-point. I did say working them in unusual ways. If you stick with plain vanillia (the vast majority of people only need vanillia) - one promise card using only HD's, no other external IDE cards, no software raid, and using onboard IDE as needed for Atapi and extra HD's then they are great.
 

CougTek

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Mercutio said:
The second that the low-end cards all have a pretty shoddy reputation (ask Santilli or, IIRC, CougTek).
You don't remember correctly. Promise controllers, despite all their bugs, are way better than HighPoint's.

I think much like Mark on the subject. I don't think it would worth it for your friend to spend big money on a 3Ware controller if he simply wants to add another few non-RAIDed HDDs to his rig. Just put the optical drives on the motherboard's integrated controller and the HDDs on the PCI controller.
 

jtr1962

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Another nod for the Promise controllers. I bought four Ultra100TX2 controllers on eBay a few weeks ago, and they come in very handy when you've filled all your M/B's IDE ports, as well as when your built-in controllers can only do ATA33 or less.

About the only issue I've had with them is that some older DOS software doesn't run correctly because the controllers use 5 or 6 KB off the top of conventional memory. I discussed the issue in more detail here at the other place. Maybe I'll write to Promise Tech support about the problem. If they need 5 KB or so for variables, why can't they leave it up to the user to choose where to put that 5 KB(with the default being the top of conventional memory)? I have loads of free upper memory space available, so it just seems silly to me that the card has to appropriate the top of conventional memory. To be fair, I haven't used any other add-on PCI IDE cards besides Promise, so they might all work this way.
 

blakerwry

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When you say that 3ware cards are the best... I assume you mean quality.. But in terms of price/performance/features I think the promise cards are better for most people.

If I had the money to burn, yes I'd get a 3ware. I believe they are of the utmost quality and probably beat the promise by a slim margin.

However, The promise's performance is probably "good enough" and not that far behind 3ware's.... The features are also "good enough" for most people. And the price is certainly more attractive.

This, in my opinion, makes promise the best overall card.
 

NRG = mc²

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I used to have an Ultra66 some 3 years back, it worked OK most of the time but its early Win2k drivers were absolute pooh, repeatedly causing the dreaded "IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN" BSODs till I threw it out - and the next day they released proper drivers for it that actually worked :oops:

But I think you're safe if you keep away from Highpoint. The HPT366 has caused me so much grief in the past (I had one onboard my Soyo 6BA+IV) that I now avoid all add on cards for anything hard drive related. Even SCSI cards :roll:

To mention just one of the problems, every time I'd hook up a drive to it that was previously written to by a normal onboard controller (like the one on the BX chipset) and write some data to it, returning it to the original controller would cause a load of bad sectors to appear - the type that dissapear once you format it. So many friends of mine who had brought their drives over to copy data mentioned it, and one day I took one of my hard drives, IIRC a 15Gb Maxtor, from the onboard BX controller to the HPT366 and when I put it back there were indeed a load of bad sectors.
 

blakerwry

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really? I've never had this happen ...

FastTrack 66 -> Fasttrack100 -> VIA 8233a controller...

or

VIA 8233a -> FastTrack100 -> VIA 8233a...

or

VIA 8233a -> BX controller -> FX controller -> BX controller....

or

486 (socket2)controller -> Fasttrack66 -> 486 controller.... they just work.
 

NRG = mc²

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I never had problems swapping drives with the Promise - only the highpoint. Isn't the Fasttrack by Promise?
 

blakerwry

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yes, promise makes the fasttrack (their line of IDE RAID controllers) They also offer the supertrack(I believe this name is reserverd for their 6+ channel raid cards).

Their regular IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers carry the 'Ultra' name. IE: ultra66, ultra100, and ultra133
 

Mercutio

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The last Promise Controller that included full, certified ATAPI was the Ultra33 one. I'm of the opinion that this makes add-on boards somewhat crippled.
 

blakerwry

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certainly does... It also makes a case for not even bothering with getting an "Ultra" line (an instead getting the FastTrak) if you know your ATAPI drives probably wont work.
 

Radboy

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You guys rock (as usual).

I thought 3ware got out of the add-on card game? .. or was that just RAID? Or am I completely mistaken?
 

blakerwry

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They sure as hell are in now.. they are the leader in high quality ATA RAID products... they might even be the only high quality ATA RAID products for what it's worth.
 

Splash

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jtr1962 said:
Another nod for the Promise controllers. I bought four Ultra100TX2 controllers on eBay a few weeks ago, and they come in very handy when you've filled all your M/B's IDE ports, as well as when your built-in controllers can only do ATA33 or less...

Superior to what Promise or 3Ware offers -- AND LESS EXPENSIVE THAN EITHER -- is the Acard AEC-6280 at just US$45 per adaptor.

Acard are those clever folk that devised those SCSI --> IDE convertors (bridges) a while back and now offer a plethora of SCSI-to-ATA bridges.

I use one for DVD-R/W and CD-R/W on one channel and a Seagate Barracuda ATA on the other channel. I was using a channel for ATAPI Zip 100 drive. I've used the AEC-6280 with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I've not used it with Win95/98/ME, but it is supported.

NOTE: These cards just didn't fall off the melon truck yesterday; they've been around for about 6 or 7 months.

aec-6280m.jpg


Some Highlights (go to their website for all the info)
Supports Ultra ATA 133 / 100 / 66 / 33 HDD
Supports capacity larger than 137GB Hard disk
Supports ATAPI devices: CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, Zip, LS-120
Cost effective and high performance
Dual independent channel of IDE bus
Supports PIO, DMA and Ultra DMA mode, Data transfer rate up to 133MB/sec.
Supports 48-bit addressing with Big Drive technology
PCI Bus
Conforms to PCI 2.2 specifications
Scatter / Gather function support
Automatic FIFO threshold selection
32-bit PCI Bus Master for up to 133MB/s data transferring rate
Low command overhead
PCI Plug and Play
Coexist with on-board IDE controller
Max. 4 IDE devices
Max. IDE data transfer rate up to 133MB/sec
Upgradeable Flash BIOS

http://www.acard.com/eng/product/adapter/pc/ide/aec-6280.html

http://www.acard.com/eng/

 

iGary

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Mercutio said:
So this is an Acard controller chip, not a repackaged Promise/HPT?

Maybe I'll buy one and give it a try.

It uses an Acard processor. There's no re-packaging of anything.

Acard started off a while back as a chip designer. Their chips go into many brands of CD duplicators and various brands of external RAID storage arrays (disc).

I bought my Acard AEC6280 locally. However, I looked up a few places on the web that sell them. There are certainly others if you want to scour Yahoo Shopping and other places.

http://www.memorylabs.net/acaeculatpci1.html

http://www.mars-tech.com/aec-6280.htm




 

Bozo

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My Promise Ultra 100 works fine in a PC that also contains a 3Ware 6000. No conflicts. I use this setup for testing. It has run Win98 SE & ME, NT4.0, Win2k Pro and Server, Windows .NET Server and Enterprise Server, and various flavors of Linux. Lindows won't run on this hardware setup for some reason.

Bozo :D
 

Santilli

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ROFL!!!!

". I did feel a moment's guilt over that, but decided it could be my small blow for justice, freedom, and revenge on behalf of Santilli."
Tannin, that made my Christmas
:mrgrn:
 

Will Rickards WT

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I did some research on that acard card and the siig.
The Acard AEC-6280 is based on the Acard APT865 chip.
The SIIG SC-PE4B12 v1.0 is based on the Acard APT865 chip.
The SIIG SC-PE4B12 v2.0 is based on the Silicon Image Sil0680 chip.
The SIIG SC-PE4B12 v3.0 is based on the Silicon Image Sil0680a chip.
 

CougTek

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Will Rickards said:
Do the promise and highpoint controllers use their own chips or do they use someone else's like silicon image?
Their own, at least on all the cards I saw from them.
 
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