I've got 4X60 GB identical drives that I'd like to use for home office
RAID in an XP server box.  I've looked on eBay and found a ton of cheap
2-port IDE cards that claim to support up to 4 IDE devices.  I
understand the RAID levels, but I don't follow how a card with 2 ports
can support 4 devices.  Does it somehow detect and use the existing IDE
ports on the motherboard (which would suck for me since I already have
the OS on one of those ports)?  Or does make use of two slave drives
(which sounds slow)?  Any help or direction to a good resource is
appreciated!

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godfatherofsoul@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> I've got 4X60 GB identical drives that I'd like to use for home office
> RAID in an XP server box.  I've looked on eBay and found a ton of cheap
> 2-port IDE cards that claim to support up to 4 IDE devices.  I
> understand the RAID levels, but I don't follow how a card with 2 ports
> can support 4 devices.

The same way most motherboards with two IDE interfaces can support four
IDE devices. Each one can have a master and a slave.  One ribbon cable
with three connectors on it; one for the motherboard and two for the
devices.

> Does it somehow detect and use the existing IDE
> ports on the motherboard (which would suck for me since I already have
> the OS on one of those ports)?  Or does make use of two slave drives
> (which sounds slow)?  Any help or direction to a good resource is
> appreciated!

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> understand the RAID levels, but I don't follow how a card with 2 ports
> can support 4 devices.

Master/Slave.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

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