A7V onboard promise controller doesn't like 350

[dblaine2]

I setup Sage on a A7V I had laying around. Its not a screamer but then again I put the 350 in it to compensate. I quickly found that the 350 and the onboard promise controller are incompatible. (windows xp wouldn't boot).

I found a small blurb on this in the Hauppauge German site. It states that any of the early Asus boards (133 and 233) are affected. Has anyone found a workaround for this (other than a new mobo)?

My workaround (for now) was simply to move all drives off the promise controller and put them on the normal IDE controllers. But that limits me to how many drives I can install in the box.

[stanger89]

Onboard promise controllers are crap anyway.

[dblaine2]

If they are crap (although I never had a problem with them before Sage), any recommendations for add-on board that supports ATA-100 drives?

[cummings66]

What's the link to the blurb? I'm wondering if my audio problems are related as I use an ASUS MB P4PE. Hauppauge USA doesn't seem to think ASUS MB's should have any problems with the PVR-350. They do have an engineer working on the problem and say they'll call me if they discover the solution.

So, maybe the blurb would be helpful.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dblaine2

If they are crap (although I never had a problem with them before Sage), any recommendations for add-on board that supports ATA-100 drives?

What do you want to do? A good RAID card can cost a good chunk of money.

[dblaine2]

The original web link in German

http://213.221.87.83/pages/support_faq_pvr250-350.html

Here is the translation to English (sorry Google doesn't do a great job but you get the idea):

References to Promise Raid control-learn

The Promise Raid CONTROLLER PDC20265, which is used for example on the Main boards Asus A7V, A7V133 and A7V266, is not compatible to the PVR 250/350. On to the Raid control-learn attached non removable disks comes it to overrun, after the PVR was active 250/350.

It was funny that this only appears on Hauppauge's German FAQ site....

[dblaine2]

Originally Posted by stanger89

What do you want to do? A good RAID card can cost a good chunk of money.

Well what I wanted to do was use the onboard Promise controller that support up to 4 ATA 100 drives. So externally I would like to do the same. I don't see myself doing RAID 5. But certainly RAID 0 or 1.

[stanger89]

FWIW, IMO RAID-0 has no place in a personal PC unless you do something like video editing.

I'm not sure what to tell you, since I don't think I'd be willing to buy any of the cheap ATA controllers, personally. For me, once you hit 4 drives (assuming they are large, >100GB each), is when it starts making sense to go RAID-5 with a good controller, 3ware, Adaptec, LSI. Just be careful since the really cheap Adaptec cards look like they use Highpoint controllers.