On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 05:36, Maureen L. Thomas wrote:
> This may sound really dumb but I am thinking of going to a motherborad
> with 4 IDE spots instead of two. I don't want to use RAID, just a third
> hard drive (for backup) and maybe in the future add a DVD. I have two
> hd and a cd-rom and a burner now. All the motherborads I've seen with 4
> also have built in raid. Will the CMOS let me not use the hd's with
> raid ? Sorry if this really is a dumb question but I have only built
> two machines and they only had 2 IDE spots. TIA, Maureen
It's easier than that. You can just pick up a cheap-o promise PCI IDE
card with two more IDE channels on it, slot it into your existing system
and plug four more devices in. Linux supports the promise chipsets
well, and I assume Windows can figure it out.
Unless you just really want a new mobo. Most of the ones I've seen have
the "RAID" as a BIOS thing and not truly hardware RAID, and if Linux
recognizes the chipset at all, it only sees it as a "standard" IDE
controller with no RAID capability whatsoever. You'll want to get specs
on the specific chipset they're using and make sure it's one that Linux
can at least recognize.
I wouldn't recommend using the onboard RAID on any mobo under about $400
at all anyway. I've yet to see a "RAID" controller on a cheap-o mobo
that wasn't some kind of BIOS-based foolery that required
windows-specific drivers to work "correctly."
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