Can you use regular IDE devices (zip, cdrom, etc) on an onboard RAID controller? Basically can the RAID controller double as an extra IDE controller?

If so, do you lose any performance? what's the downside drawbacks? I basically don't want to use RAID 0 function anymore because of reliability issues. The little real world performance increase isn't worth low reliability to me, I have 2x 60gxp drives in RAID 0. I just want to use the RAID controller as a 3rd and 4th IDE controller.

Thanks.

Usually, no. I tried it with mine, and Win2k refused to boot. In the manual that came with my motherboard, it said explicitly that it wouldn't work (but I had to try it anyway )

I have set up 3 different ABIT ST-6Rs. Before implementing RAID we tried different EIDE devices on different channels. Every combination we set up worked.

Depends on the controller. I haven't tested this, but the HighPoint controllers apparently don't like anything but hard drives. I'm not sure about the Promise, but if you can set them to ATA100 controllers (depending on the motherboard) you may be able to use them.

As a matter of practice, I put the Optical drives on the motherboard chipset IDE controllers and the hard drive(s) on the add-on ATA controller.

thanks for the input....i'll try it out and see how it goes.

I'm runnin an onboard Promise RAID controller (Tyan Tiger 200 mobo)

Apologies for bringing this up again but I was linked here from EpoX's site while looking up specs for one of their motherboards and Highpoint say their controller, at least the HPT372 (how many others do they make?), is backward compatible with all ATA devices. Anyone know if this is true? Did the motherboard you tried Brain Frank have a 372 on it?

Just remember that you will not be able to access that drive until you install the drivers for it. So not booting from CD with that drive.

I was thinking more along the lines of putting a burner and hard drive on the HighPoint and an LS-120 and DVD-ROM on the motherboard ports. That way I can have everything on seperate controllers (and therefore at max performance) and still able to boot off either CD or the LS-120.

All this assumes of course, that the 372 is in fact backward compatible with all ATA devices as they claim. Anyone actually have a mobo with one of these on it who can vouch for this?

I think any motherboard that has a Highpoint controller can be used as extra IDE connectors. If your motherboard BIOS has the option to Boot From "Future ATA" then its all good.

Promise controllers, I am 100 % sure do not allow it.

I would think it should work as long as the controller's bios can detect the drive and set its transfer rates.

I have highpoint 370 controller, and it runs all hard drives fine. the manual does say though not to use CD roms on it, im not sure why this is. You can use your hard drives no problem on it.

if you want to boot from cd rom and install windows on the raid controller, you just have to press F6 while seup is launching and have the driver floppy handy (foolish microsoft, wanting to phase out floppy disks and setup REQUIRES a floppy disk for scsi drivers.

Im putting this here cause it has a little to do with it and because it is a pretty simple question.

Are u able to put CD/DVD drives on a PCI IDE Controller?? The specifik controller im thinking of is the Promise ultra133 TX2 IDE controller. The CD-drive i would put on it is an ASUS 52x drive.
Will this work???