Hard Drives

starixiom wrote on 5/9/2003, 8:43 PM
I have an old system that is in the process of an upgrade. THe system drive is a SCSI (Ultra160 if im not mistaken). I want to use IDE drive as my capture drive for obvious reasons, mainly cost per 1gb ratio. I downloaded the manual and it says both can not be used at the same time using the onboard controllers.

What i was wondering is if i used a PCI IDE controller, if i could use both scsi and ide on the same system. I think it sounds possible since the controller would load its own bios from the card in order for the system to recognize >160gb drive. My concern is if i disable the onboard ide controller and install a different pci card controller that this is going to effect the stability of the system.

Has anyone tried this with any success? I am not looking for a RAID setup because the IDE drive is in a removable tray.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 5/9/2003, 10:39 PM
I don't see any reason why you should have problems. I currently have two IDE controllers on this system, so I can and have had up to 8 devices going at once.

If you're going to get one of the newer IDE 133's they need a seperate controllercard anyways (unless you have a high speed IDE 133 controller card already build into your motherboard. I do... so in effect I have two IDE 133 controller cards. And as you said such cards preload their own BIOS prior to the OS booting, so Windows seems happy.
kirkdickinson wrote on 5/10/2003, 12:37 AM
starixiom,

I don't understand what you are saying about SCSI and IDE?

I have been using both since 1993. There is no restriction about mixing the two and I have never had a problem with both controllers and drives on the same system.

I have had several motherboards with built in SCSI. Usually only Server or Workstation boards have integrated SCSI. Every board that I have used or read about that has integrated SCSI also has integrated IDE/EIDE.

What is your current "old" motherboard with this ridiculous restriction??
starixiom wrote on 5/10/2003, 7:00 AM
Here is a reply to my question from technical support:

"There is also one open 3-1/2" internal bay (the other contains the 18.2G system
hard drive), which can be used to install a second hard drive (a media drive),
which is mandatory for editing video or audio content. The system has been
set-up from the factory to support Ultra-160 SCSI drives and IDE peripherals.
Please note that these workstations do not support a mix of IDE hard drives and
SCSI hard drives. You must choose one type or the other. The system currently
contains an Ultra-160 hard drive."

So it implies that you cant use both SCSI and IDE hard drives at the same time with the onboard controllers (integrated into the motherboard) they provide. I am sure there is a workaround (firewire, USB2) but i wanted to know if a PCI Card would conflict with the onboard ide chipset.
mikkie wrote on 5/10/2003, 7:09 AM
Strange stuff indeed.... Been at this a few years and as Kirk never heard anything like that previously - ever.

You might want to post more details on this system itself... Otherwise it occurs to me that the original 18 gig drive is nothing to write home about at the moment - might be more cost effective to set the system to IDE and install 2 drives.

On the other hand, system may be too old to do much with - consider that you can get an HP refurb with something like an Athlon XP+ 1800 for less then $400 (check ecost.com countdown page etc.) and you may be better off starting fresh or doing major renovation.