FASTtrack 100 (Ultra ATA/100 RAID card)

[Bovon]

When I bought this mobo about 2 years ago, I was interested in RAID, but the technology was new, and the builders were overwhelmed with setup (and apparently) functional problems with the mobo chipsets of the day.

Iwill KK266 (VIA 8363A apollo KT133A)
512 mb PC 133 SDRAM (Crucial)
AMD 1.4 GHz Thunderbird

Those that opted for controller cards instead and the normal non RAID boards were having better success...so, I bought the above noted card. I have never used it, and do not intend to set up a RAID configuration anymore.

Question:
(I cannot find a clear answer in the manual or at the Promise website).

Can this card, designed to setup a RAID configuration...be used as a normal IDE controller and not RAID?.

Anybody gone this way before?..

Tnx

[John Prophet]

I was under the impression that any RAID card could function as a regular IDE card. The exception being that most RAID cards state that they arent really made for CDROMS or other ATAPI devices (dvdroms etc).

So if you are going to just use it for slapping on a few hard drives, you should be good.

JP

[Uncle Bob]

I hope this helps. I have used a Promise " controller" card to add
HDD's and Zip drives to an existing machine, to a total of 8 IDE
devises. Money talks, so that rig went to a neighbor. I then decided to do a raid. Again in an existing rig. Promise card was used. Worked well. Promise Techs answered ALL of my questions
fully, with patients. It is my understanding that a raid card could
be used for adding IDE's , but the controller card is not a raid. Also
you can not use both cards on the same MOBO.

[John Prophet]

There is an article at toms hardware where they took a ata66 controller and turned it into a "fastrack" RAID controller by adding 2 resistors and flashing the bios. I say that to show that the RAID and the regular ATA cards are pretty much the same thing..so the raid card should definitely be able to function like the plain old ATA card.

JP

[Uncle Bob]

That's interesting. The tech's I talked to were soo nice and patient I didn't bug them with any "what if's".

[Bovon]

Thanks John and Unc Bob.. I am gonna try it soon as I get the time. I figure it will work too..but just in case the drivers for a specific RAID controller card are designed for RAID configuration, I might want to look further, and get an Ultra 133 X 2 card etc. (I have this "thing" about adding drivers that will not be needed).

At the moment, I don't really need to add more controllers. I just have the card, and since I have ruled out going for a RAID setup.. I may as well find out what I can do with this controller card.

You are correct Bob, Promise support is good today, but there was a time when you couldn't get a peep out of them...lotsa guys wouldn't use Promise cards or any device that in-cooperated Promise chipsets...guess they got the message, huh..