IDE Channel 3+4

[MJCfromCT]

Hi All,

My question is, are there motherboards out there that have more than two ide channels? I'm curious about hooking up a 3rd hard drive, but i don't really want to buy a controller card (clear side panel, asthetics only)...so are there motherboards that have more IDE channels to plug in hardware?

My Gigabyte GA-7AVXP motherboard has IDE 3 and IDE 4 channels, but i believe they are only for RAID...any way to get them to work for non-RAID applications? Thanks in advance :)

[Philip1952]

You can use IDE 3 & 4 for normal usage nonraid. Plug in the drives you want to use and do not go into the raid bios. The mother board will just see them as other IDE devices then.

Only put HDD's on IDE 3 & 4. Most raid controllers get a little tempramental if you try to put optical drives on them.

[BipolarBill]

Boards with Highpoint RAID controllers are much more forgiving for single drives.

[MJCfromCT]

i believe that my motherboard comes with silicon image raid and sata

[BipolarBill]

Believe? Do you have the board or not? The Gigabyte GA-7AVXP has a Promise RAID chip onboard.

If you have SATA, you don't have the GA-7AVXP - you have the GA-7AVXP Ultra, which has the Promise and the SI.

Please give us the straight scoop. We are not psychic.

[BipolarBill]

Both the Promise and the SI are RAID controllers, BTW.

[MJCfromCT]

my apoligies bipolar bill, it is promise

my SATA RAID uses an SIL3112 chipset, that's where i got confused with the Silicon Image

i'll try to be more clear in the future