Asus P4P800 and IDE/SATA Drives

[aamitabh]

Hi Folks!
I am almost at the verge of buying the P4P800 deluxe motherboard with the following peripheral:

Lite-on DVD-ROM
CDRW
Segate 80GB V IDE Hard Drive
Western Digital 36GB 10K RMP Raptor Drive

I have thought of various configurations in mind to connect them, but I cannot decide what the best way is to hook them up for best performance. I need to make the decision now, since I need to mail order the round IDE cables (expensive) with the motherboard. Also, does any body know what kind of IDE cables are packaged with the deluxe version of the motherboard. The picture was not very clear.

Here are the possible configurations: WD SATA drive goes into its own connector, so no issues. But now I have 2 IDE peripherals and 1 IDE hard drive.

Configuration 1:
IDE Channel 1 Master: DVD ROM drive
IDE Channel 2 Master: CDRW Drive
Raid Controller Channel 1: Segate HD, the assumption here is that this channel is not shared by any other drive, so better performance. This RAID channel is configured as an individual IDE channel.

Configuration 2:
IDE Channel 1 Master: Segate HD
IDE Channel 1 Slave: DVD ROM or CDRW
IDE Channel 2 Master: DVD ROM or CDRW

Based on the best configuration and the cables that come with the motherboard, I can order the round IDE cables.

Thanks in anticipation

[thegladiatorgy]

Welcome to TechIMO!

I ordered the P4P800 deluxe also. I hasn't arrived yet though.

You can probably put the 80GB by itself and the two CD drives together.

I guess you're going to be loading the OS on the raptor...right?

I saw a review for the raptor on anandtech. It seems to be a great performance drive. Wish if I had one.

[aamitabh]

Yes! the Raptor will be the boot drive.