Need a good SATA+PATA card

[Adcadet]

My MSI K8T neo has acted goofy for a long while now, being very picky about what drives gets plugged into where. I have a WD IDE HD, a Hitachi IDE HD, a WD SATA drive, a DVD reader, a DVD burner. My motherboard has the standard two onboard IDE channels, a VIA VT8237 which gives me two more channels, and a Promise 20378 On-Board SATA controller with a single IDE channel. This clearly looks like enough channels for my 5 drives, right? Is it then too much to ask that all of these drives at the same time? Apparently it is.

The Promise POS isn't recognized by Windows XP CDs, making it necessary to slipstream drivers if I want to install onto disks connected there. The Via controller, which apparently was made for RAIDing disks (ug!) can't seem to detect IDE disks reliably reliably - it frequently refuses to detect drives (either the WD or Hitachi) that are plugged into it. And now it seems the second IDE channel refuses to detect drives connected to it. Both IDE drives, by the way, are set to cable select, which I would think would work great in 2006. So right now the only channels that are working properly are the the first standard onboard IDE channel and the SATA channels.

So what can an idiot like me do? Run with a max of three drives connected at once? Not ideal. Does anybody know of a good quality card that has multiple IDE and SATA channels, and that should be detected properly by both WinXP and current linux distros, out of the box/CD? Oh, and it would be great if this card were cheap.

 

[ddrueding]

I've never had good luck with cable select. Give master/slave a shot and wee what happens.

 

[Adcadet]

Oh, and I just found out this nice gem: when the Promise Fast Track does detect a drive, it will frequently make the drive product a lound click which freezes any operations involving that drive. Try browsing through files on a drive hooked up to the Fast Crap, and you hear a series of loud clicks while it takes forever to open up each file. Hook the same drive up to another controller, and there are no loud clicks (maybe one at start up), and browsing through files is quick.

 

[Bozo]

I've never had good luck with cable select. Give master/slave a shot and wee what happens.

Agreed. Cable select does not usually work well.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

Drop the DVD reader; I doubt you're using it much.
Buy a Promise SATAII150 TX2. It works with everything.

Yes, you still need a slipstream disc.

 

[Adcadet]

$40 at ebay and it only includes a single PATA channel. Man are these things expensive if not soldered onto a motherboard.

 

[Tea]

It's a punishment visited on you by a just god. You deserve it.

(Nobody uses cable select.)

(Well, OK, Compaq uses cable select - sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it.)

 

[Buck]

I would recommend the SATAII150 cards as well.

Dell also uses Cable Select.

By the way tea, Warum hat dein Elefant grüne Gummistiefeln?

 

[Bozo]

Dell also uses Cable Select.

That's so the goons assembling them don't have to know anything or think


Bozo :joker:

 

[Adcadet]

After playing around with my hardware some more, I'm now thinking the problem is with my WD 2000JB. It would refuse to allow my computer to boot when hooked up as a slave off my Hitachi IDE drive on the second onboard IDE channel no matter what the jumper settings. It wouldn't allow my computer to boot when hooked singly up to the onboard Promise controller, again regardless of jumper settings. And when plugged into the first onboard IDE channel at best it would give a BIOS error of Primary Slave drive - ATAPI incompatible and would be undetectable by Windows and would give a ATA 3 command timeout in Linux. I still think the Via and Promise controllers on this motherboard are pieces of crap, however. I miss my days of running SCSI drives. Those were so much simpler.

 

[Tea]

I'm not actually sure, Buck. But I think it might be because the blue ones clashed with the handbag.

 

[Gilbo]

Was it Maxtor drives that for sometime wouldn't be recognized if they were set to CS & were the only devices on the cable. Or was it that they wouldn't work in Master if they were the only devices on the cable. Bah, I can't remember.

Took me a couple of hours of fiddling before I figured that out. If it hadn't been for the WWW I would have gone mad.

 

[Adcadet]

If it hadn't been for the WWW I would have gone mad.

It it hadn't been for the WWW I wouldn't have gone mad.

 

[mubs]

Grau und Grün passen nicht zusammen. Möglicherweise ist Ihr Elefant nicht grau?

 

[ddrueding]

Das elefant ist blau.

 

[ddrueding]

I miss my days of running SCSI drives. Those were so much simpler.

SCSI is easier than brain sugery, but not much else. You want easy? Get SATA.

 

[Buck]

Das Elefant ist doch Grau, aber Ihre Handtasche und Gummistiefeln sind grün. So lange Tea ihre Handtasche nicht echte Pelz ist.

 

[Buck]

WD drives have had issues in the past with Cable Select too. They prefer the usual WD Single/Master/Slave settings.

 

[Adcadet]

SCSI is easier than brain sugery, but not much else. You want easy? Get SATA.

Well, my SCSI equipment worked as it should, or at least as I thought it should so it was "easy" in my mind.

I had a really fabulous professor, who is now unfortunately deceased, who would call up Dell for tech support for his home computer and explain that he was both a rocket scientist (had a BS in aerospace engineering and maybe an MS as well) and a brain surgeon (he was an ENT surgeon who specialized in neuro-ENT) and still had difficulty with his computer.

 

[Mercutio]

I get calls from a guy I went to high school with about computer stuffs. He's got a M.S. ChemE, a PhD. in Pharmacy and tops all that all off with a law degree, and graduated at the top of every one of those classes... but he'll call me for stuff like printing to a non-default printer in Windows, or making a music CD with Media Player.

I'm not sure there's a correlation between being smart and being good with PCs.

 

[Stereodude]

I've used cable select for years, and haven't any issues. I never used to use it, but it seems to work pretty well with the 80pin ATA-66/100 era cables and drives.