I Have An Ultra66 Ide Card (got It Free)

[Spindulik]

I got an Ultra66 IDE card. It looks like it has potential for some sort of good use.

As far as I can see, I can add 4 more hard drives, CDROMs, burners, DVDROMs or ZIPs. Also can be use as a RAID backup system.

I am told that I can connect multiple hard drives to it, and Windows will see all of them joined as one huge hard drive (one drive letter), or individual drives.

I would appreciate any replies from anyone who uses a card like this.

Check this out! It says I can convert an Ultra66 to aFastrack66 for the cost of 25¢ up to $15.00!

[puremindmatters]

Yeah, theoretically you could add 4 HDs (or other drives) - but you will be limited by the output of your power supply. If you have an output of 280 Watts you might be able to connect 6 drives (whatever they be) altogether, after that you'd need a power supply with a higher output.

I've never heard that you can partition upwards (i.e. create one drive out of several HDs) and I have no idea how this could work. You can of course partition a single HD into several logical drives.

Windows would see the HDs as individual drives.

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by puremindmatters@6 March 2003 - 15:19
...I've never heard that you can partition upwards (i.e. create one drive out of several HDs) and I have no idea how this could work. You can of course partition a single HD into several logical drives.

Windows would see the HDs as individual drives.

Thanks for the input.

The Ultra66 card that I have, has a programmable BIOS (can be updated), that will allow you to change settings. Therefore, the card is telling the motherboard that only one hard drive exists, but actually multiple hard drives are attached.

I have a 500watt power supply, with enough 12volt recepticles.

I am looking to see if other people here, have actually used this kind of setup. And how it works.

[sunrat]

My guess is you could run two IDE (aka ATA) drives on it, but seeing as most modern hard drives are ATA100 or ATA133, they wouldn't run at maximum speed. Better to run CD or DVD drives from it which are ata33, and run extra HDs on the main mobo IDE channels. You can run 2 drives on each IDE channel.
To use multiple drives as one you need a RAID channel, usually an extra PCI card ,which is not the same as an IDE card, although RAID can use IDE interface.

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by sunrat@6 March 2003 - 16:10
... need a RAID channel, usually an extra PCI card ,which is not the same as an IDE card, although RAID can use IDE interface.

That's what the website claims that this card can do (RAID).

I was hoping that somebody here has actually done it.

Here's what I am going to do. I'll convert this Ultra66 to a Fastrck66. Update the BIOS. I also have a few spare hard drives. I'll hook them up and see what happens.

Then I'll place a post here and give you guys the results. I hope I don't mess my computer up.