Topic: HDD interface question

[W7RE]

I've been out of the PC hardware loop for a while, so some of this is unfamiliar to me.

I've got one of these coming in the mail, should be here Friday:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131593

It's a hand-me-down from a friend, who's also sending me a CPU, video card, and RAM he had lying around from previous upgrades. Problem is, all the hard drives I have are 7200rpm IDE. He tells me there should be an IDE interface for use with a CDROM drive, which I should be able to attach a hard drive too as well (or even run with no CDROM and use 2 IDE HDDs instead).

Should that work? Or on to what my initial question was going to be:

Is there some sort of IDE controller card I can buy for cheap that will add an IDE controller or two to the system? I've been searching Newegg, but I'm having trouble telling if the cards are for adding IDE to an old PCI board, or if they'll only work with a PCI Express slot. (or do old PCI cards work in PCI Express slots?)

[Cobra951]

According to the specifications tab on that newegg page, you get 2 PATA connections.  PATA, or parallel ATA, is what they're calling the old HDD interface standard these days (with the current one being SATA).  So it seems you're all set. 

I have an Adaptec PCI-to-IDE card in my PC to give me an extra 2 connections.  (The device manager identifies it as "WinXP Promise Ultra 133 TX2 IDE Controller".)  It works fine.  I imagine that NVidia mobo supports standard PCI, no?  Maybe I'm out of touch, but it seems to me that it's way too soon to ignore it.

Edit:  Yes, you get 3 standard PCI slots.

Edit 2:  Oh, cool.  You also get 2 eSATA ports.  You can hook up compatible external drives at 3 Gb/sec.  WD makes some.

[W7RE]

Well I'd like to grab a faster HDD or two eventually, SATA or whatever. Right now I don't really want to spend more money that I have too, since I'm trying to scrounge up the money for an Xbox 360. I mostly use my PC for Warcraft anyway, so I don't think it'll hurt too much to stick with IDE for the time being. I just wanted to make sure I could, and I'm out of touch with the lingo. :p

Thanks

[scottws]

Each PATA/IDE channel supports two devices.  Since that motherboard only has one, it only supports two PATA/IDE devices at a time.  Yes, you'd need a controller card if you want to run two PATA/IDE hard drives and a PATA/IDE CD-ROM drive.

Where are you seeing the two PATA ports, Cobra?  I see this:

PATA      1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max

[Cobra951]

Actually, I said 2 PATA connections (and 2 eSATA ports).  I was thinking 2 devices.  Damn it, should've finished law school and become a slippery lawyer.

[W7RE]

Any opinions on wether I'd be better off with a controller card or just a new SATA hard drive? My guess would be that a SATA hard drive would be the obvious answer, but I'm trying not too spend too much money here. I could get a controller card for less than $20 including shipping from Newegg, or I could pay around $50 for a 250 gig SATA 3.0Gb/s drive.

I was reading on the customer reviews on one of the controller cards (can't remember which one) that Windows failed to recognize the drives attached to it on a somewhat regular basis. Is that somethign common with something like this, or probably just that specific one?

[Cobra951]

I don't have that problem, though it does take several seconds to detect it and the devices attached (one HDD and one optical drive) upon boot.  I don't boot off of them, but I don't think that would be an issue.

Why would you need either?  You can use the PATA controller in that motherboard to boot up your current hard drive and an optical drive, or 2 HDDs.  If you still need more IDE devices after that, then you can go for a PCI-to-IDE card.  You should be able to get a workable system off the ground without one.

[W7RE]

Yea, I can get a workable system, but I'm gonna want the extra space.

I've got an 80Gb, a 100Gb, and a 120Gb. The 100Gb drive is 99% full with backups of everything I will want to save for after the format and Windows installation. So without sticking in at least one more HDD, I won't have access to my music, game files, internet bookmarks. Pretty much any data that doesn't come with a windows installation. I can't just transfer from my old PC after the fact, because I only have one copy of Windows, and one power supply. I won't be able to run both systems, and the old one crashes so much I'm not sure I'd want to.

I'm gonna just get the controller card (this one). I'll use the onboard controller for CDROM and my boot drive, and the controller card for the rest.

Thanks again for the help guys.

[scottws]

There's nothing wrong with getting a $20 controller card for the average person, but personally I was always concerned with the speed.

I always felt like all that data traveling across the PCI bus (which shares bandwidth across all slots on original PCI) would be a bottleneck, though that's more gut feeling than true fact.  Plus usually the cheaper cards operate in software mode, with the driver using the CPU to handle the I/O traffic.  But true hardware controller cards are expensive.   Years ago, I spent $150 on a 3ware 2-drive SATA controller, though it did RAID too.

But if you're using your Windows drive on the on board PATA/IDE controller with data drives on the PCI bus, then it shouldn't be a big deal at all unless you're doing all kinds of file transfers at the same time as trying to compress something in H.264.

[W7RE]

Yea, I'm planning windows/games/apps on the onboard drive, music on one of the controller drives, and videos/random shit on the 3rd controller drive. I shouldn't end up actually running anything off those drives, just streaming music/video or storage.

Eventually I'll want to go to SATA drives altogether, but I'll do that later when I'm willing to spare the money. Like I said above I'm saving for that 360. (even trying to sell off a WoW account to get there, lol)