SATA or PATA..which way to go?

PC Hardware & Gaming PC Builds, Modding & Overclocking
1

My A8V deluxe mobo has 4 SATA ports and 3 PATA ports.

2 SATA ports are handled by the Via VT8237 RAID controller and the other two are handled by a Promise 20378 RAID controller. Now, I used the VIA RAID controller as the darn Promise RAID has a SATA BootROM sequence that used to waste my time during boot up.
So I now have two 74GB WD Raptors in RAID 0 using two SATA ports of the VIA controller while the Promise RAID controller’s ports remain free. (2 VIA used + 2 Promise free = 4 SATA)

Also, I’ve two PATA ports and a single PATA RAID port shared between two IDE drives on the same channel. I’ve connected a 320GB PATA HDD to one of the simple PATA ports and kept the RAID pata port free. (1 PATA used + 1 PATA unused + 1 PATA (Raid) unused )

My cabby can accomodate a max of 4 HDDs. I plan to take two new 500GB HDDs and replace my existing 320GB PATA HDD with these HDDs.

My question is, with PATA drives being phased out, should I replace my current PATA HDD and connect

  1. two new PATA 500GB HDDs on the simple PATA ports. or
  2. use the SATA RAID controller and connect two new SATA 500GB HDDs.

My main concern here is that the Promise RAID controller would necessarily want the new SATA drives to work in RAID and I don’t want that. I want them to work independently.

Hence, I’m leaning towards getting two PATA HDDs.

Any suggestions guys???

2

my votes goes for “SATA” will work better and faster if u are gonna RAID them up as well…just fyi…Seagate 7200.10 500 gig bought yesterday for 6.3k :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

3

^ from where?

4

the hdd’s can be used with the Promise controller as independent drives…its not necessary that you’ll have to use them in raid…

5

I’ve read on some forums that you have to used the RAID utility and create a single drive striped array :confused: to use a single drive with the Promise 20378 RAID controller. Wonder if anyone here has faced this problem.

Also wonder what will happen if I attach two identical drives with the same specs to the RAID controller.
My last experience of doing such a thing with my Asrock 939-A8X-M board was a blue screen and some exception thrown followed by a reboot i.e. Win XP would not even boot when I attached my 2nd WD Raptor(I was using my
1st WD Raptor as a normal HDD and couldn’t play around with it.)

6

well…for setting up single or independent drives i guess u have to select the raid 0 option while setting up the drive…

thats what i did when i had the asus k8v…and i had 2 identical drives working independently without a problem…