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Hello,
I recently installed the Promise Ultra66 add-on PCI card and a Maxtor
DiamondMax Ultra UDMA66 hard drive. The install went without error.
The Promise card will use 1 IRQ so be prepared for this. While this
is true, you can attach up to 4 HDD's, not 2 as on your motherboard,
using 1 IRQ. You should also be able to disable one of your two mobo
IDE ports. This should free up one of your IRQ's. This means your
can have 6 IDE devices instead of 4 for the price of 2 IRQ's. I plan
to do this if I need the USB port on my mobo. Don't attach your
CD-ROM or other removeable devices because it won't work in DOS.
To copy your partitions to a new drive (or multiple HDD's), use
PartitionMagic, not the utility which comes with your HDD. The last
time I used a manufacturer HDD utility for copying partitions (which
is the last time I ever will), it installed EZ-BIOS (which is not
easy) even though the mobo didn't need it. EZ-BIOS causes problems
if you want to copy partitions from an existing HDD or later move the
new HDD to another mobo.
URL PM: http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/index.html
The new Maxtor is 30% faster than my old WD HDD in throughput. This
is because the Maxtor is a 7200 RPM compared to my WD which is 5400
RPM. Also, the Maxtor has other technologies which other HDD brands
don't have. Everything went extremely well and smoothly. Because I
already have dozens of apps and other difficult to install features
installed, reinstalling was not an option. PM is the only safe way
to copy the partitions to a new drive. Oh, and yes, I now have tons
of extra space on my HDD. In fact, I will be able to once again
store a hidden backup of my partitions to the back of the HDD. Using
your HDD to make backups is ten times faster than using a tape drive.
Nice... isn't it?
Daniel.
> Some of you wanted to know how to perform faster Explorations.
> If you don't want to upgrade your motherboard to a Ultra 160/m
> SCSI capable mobo or can't afford to buy those $350 Quantum Atlas
> V 18.3 GB ULTRA 160 SCSI3 7200 RPM HDD's, you can still get
> faster scan's.
>
> I read a review at:
> http://www.ocmax.com/Reviews/FT66/promise_fast_trak66_page1.htm
> which benchmarks the Promise FastTrak66 Ultra ATA/66 RAID Card.
> The Promise is a PCI card which allows you to use RAID
> configurations. Several of these configs. are up to 50% faster
> than normal UDMA66 and SCSI drives. From what I understand after
> reading the review, the RAID 0 config. will not only combine 2
> UDMA66 IDE drives, but also double throughput.
>
> With a FastTrak66 and 2 $200 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 30 GB drives,
> you would have a total space of 60 GB's and better performance.
> This is the URL for the FastTrak66:
> http://www.promise.com/Products/ideraid/ft66page.htm
>
> This is the URL for the new DiamondMax Plus drives from Maxtor:
> http://www.maxtor.com/diamondmaxplus/40p.html
>
> If you decide to implement this setup, I suggest you wait until
> the end of next month. The new IBM 75 GB UDMA66 HDD's will be
> coming out and will force the price of all present HDD's down.
>
> I recently purchased a Promise Ultra66 PCI UDMA66 IDE card and a
> 30 GB Maxtor HDD. I'll let you know how it installs. I am not
> expecting any problems. Most of my time was spent backing up all
> my data using my tape backup and reading the PartitionMagic v5.0
> manual. I intend to transfer the partitions from my old WD to my
> new Maxtor using PM.
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