more than one raid card in a pc?

[Mahachippy]

Is it possible to use more than one raid pci card in a pc? The reason I ask is because I have an older motherboard and I would like to get a sata optical drive and sata hard drives. I have checked and round the sata raid card that will support the optical drive, but it only has two sata internal interfaces. However, I need two for a raptor boot drive and a seagate storage drive. So, my question is, can the optical drive be run off of one sata controller card and the hard drive be run off of another in the same computer?

[Vertigo Acid]

Why not just get a SATA card with 4 ports? http://hardforum.com/images/smilies/confused.gif
If you're dead set on 2 cards, it is possible although I ran into an issue in the past with a LSI SCSI card and a Highpoint SATA RAID card not playing nice together. A firmware update on the highpoint fixed it, but a fix might not always be available. I would also be weary of using two identical cards, as they probably are setup to use the same memory addresses and might not like eachother.

[Mahachippy]

Very true about having the same address. You know on second thought this morning, I am not so sure if I shouldn't go sata hard drive and keep my ide dvd burner. Oh well, thanks for the help!

[FlatLine84]

I currently use all the SATA ports on my ABIT IC7-G, and have a seond SATA card w/ 4 ports that I have a couple of HD's on.

[Mahachippy]

FlatLIne84, do you have any sata optical drives or are they all hard drives?

[FlatLine84]

All are HD's, but I wouldn't think it would matter.

[eastvillager]

Put in as many as you want. If there is a limitation, it would be card-specific, so just check the docs for your card.

[Mahachippy]

Thanks eastvillager. I think I might go ahead with the two cards...I really would like to have a sata optical drive for the lack fo cable mess like I do with my ide cables! Thanks again everybody!

[S1nF1xx]

The problem is you won't be able to specify which card will boot first. You may be able to switch PCI ports around to get it to change.

I'm running a mobo with an on-board RAID controller, and I tried to put in a PCI IDE card. Well, with that in the computer wants to boot of the PCI controller first, so I can't put any HDDs on it.

[Mahachippy]

S,
Thanks for the tip...I will definitly play around with the order of things to see what works.

[uzor]

One thing I've noticed in the past with multiple identical cards is that it's best to add them one at a time. Windows seemed to always get confused when I added them all at once, but if I added one, detected, installed, rebooted, repeat, it worked fine.

http://www.mentallyretired.com/h3/index.cfm/u_125984 (http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?u=125984)

[Martin Cracauer]

Software RAID.

[Mahachippy]

Uzor...thanks for the tip...I will give that a try when I get my cards.

Martin..I don't need to raid anything, but thanks for the tip. I mainly just need the sata ports on the controller cards. I have an older mother board and want to be able to have a raptor boot drive, one seagate storage drive, and a plextor optical drive. The only problem is that after checking the plextor website, I found that the optical sata drive only supports only a limited amount of controller cards..all of which only have two internal sata pots. My problem is that I need three ports to connect both harddrives and the optical drive. But like I said, thanks for the tip...all resoponses are greatly appreciated!

[uzor]

No problem... let us know how it goes once you get your hardware in.

http://www.mentallyretired.com/h3/index.cfm/u_125984 (http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?u=125984)

[Vertigo Acid]

http://www.plextor.com/english/support/media_712SA.htm
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/PX-716SA%20motherboard%20compatability%20listing.htm
Would seem to suggest otherwise.
There are two cards on that list that have 4 ports.

[Mahachippy]

Will do uzor!

Hey vertigo...I was looking at the second link last night..I want the 16x optical drive. Which cards have the 4 ports...the ones I could find only had 2. Thank you for your help by the way!

[Vertigo Acid]

The Promise TX4 and SiI3114