Promise 20265R onboard RAID Controller

[Brave01Heart]

Hi

I have an Elite L7VTA motherboard and it has a Promise 20265R "onboard" Controller (FASTRAK100 LITE).

I have the controller enabled in the BIOS and have installed the drivers during WinXP setup and the controller is shown in Device Manager as:

+ SCSI and RAID Controllers
(WinXP Promise Fastrak100 ™ Lite Controller)

I realise this is a an OEM enquiry and I have already contacted them but I want to be sure that what they are telling me is correct so I would appreciate any input on this query please:

I do not, as yet, have any drives connected to the onboard IDE channels and when my computer is booting up, I see the following message on the second boot screen:

It shows the name of the controller at the top (Promise Fastrak 100 Lite) and also the BIOS version which is 2.01.00.

Underneath this, the system checks for any drives connected to the
controller but does not find any and it then states: "The BIOS is not
installed".

I asked my supplier about this and they said that until I install a drive to one of the IDE channels, I will get the message that the BIOS is not
installed and once I connect a drive, I will then see the Promise BIOS
screen on boot-up and then I can press F6 and configure the drive.

Is this correct?

Also I have another couple of query's which they could not answer and I would appreciate it if you could please?

Q: My standard IDE channnels support up to ATA133 and my hard drive is an ATA133 drive and the speed is excellent. The Fastrak 100 Lite controller supports up to ATA 100 (according to the Promise Fastrak 100-Lite User's Guide). Will I see any improve in performance if I connect my ATA133 drive to the controller and if so, what is the simplest way setup and configure an ATA133 drive to the onboard controller?

Q: If I connect the ATA133 drive to IDE3, can I keep my SLAVE drive on the motherboards SECONDARY IDE channel and do I need to have a drive on the motherboards PRIMARY IDE channel for it to work correctly?

Regards

Brave01Heart

[Kawadevil]

Hello Braveheart,

I've got some answers for you.

Quote:

Q: I asked my supplier about this and they said that until I install a drive to one of the IDE channels, I will get the message that the BIOS is not
installed and once I connect a drive, I will then see the Promise BIOS
screen on boot-up and then I can press F6 and configure the drive.

Is this correct?

Yes this is. I got an Asus P4PE with the same RAID config. And it reports the same thing when there is no drive attached to it. a RAID controller act's like a SCSI controller in some way.

Quote:

Q: My standard IDE channels support up to ATA133 and my hard drive is an ATA133 drive and the speed is excellent. The Fastrak 100 Lite controller supports up to ATA 100 (according to the Promise Fastrak 100-Lite User's Guide). Will I see any improve in performance if I connect my ATA133 drive to the controller and if so, what is the simplest way setup and configure an ATA133 drive to the onboard controller?

If you connect an ATA133 drive to an ATA100 controller your IDE speed will be degraded in theory. But you wont see the difference (a few percent).
If you want more speed out of your RAID controller, attach a second drive and use your RAID controller bios to make a RAID 0 configuration.

The trick with this configuration is that the files you put on your drive(s) wil be evenly shared over the two of them.
But, when somthing goes wrong with one of the drives, you lose all of your information on it.

Quote:

Q: If I connect the ATA133 drive to IDE3, can I keep my SLAVE drive on the motherboards SECONDARY IDE channel and do I need to have a drive on the motherboards PRIMARY IDE channel for it to work correctly?

Just try it. Mine works perfectly if I do it. But why you want to do this?
Normaly you set the first or only drive as a Master.

More questions?
Just post them and someone will answer them.

[Brave01Heart]

Hi Kawadevil

Thanks for your input.

At the moment I'm quite happy with my master drive running on the PRIMARY M/B PORT. The drive is ATA133 and so is the m/b and I installed XP in just 12 minutes from when you see "set will complete in 39 minutes".

Not sure if I'd lose performance if I connect the drive to the Promise IDE port, because IDE 3 and 4 only support ATA100.

No doubt I will have a few more q's as I use the new m/b, but I can always ask again at a later date so I'll close the thread until then.


MODS: Please close this post.


Regards