Is DDRAM faster than RDRAM?

No, we would like it to be but RDRAM is faster for the moment.

why would you want DDR-RAM?? I say that "RDRAM" Rules they should continue to upgrade the "RDRAM" technology and make it more cost-efficient.... and of course, you never have to agree with me... =]

I'd like to buy the ASUS P4T533 Motherboard with 2 x Samsung 512 meg rimm 4200 sticks. However I'm from Australia, and I'm having no luck with any resellers here. So i'm going to have to import. Can someone please point me in the right direction

Thanks in Advance for any reply,

Kym.

Hello, I just bought the P4T533 Motherboard from http://www.googlegear.com for a 176.00, and a Pentium 4, 2.26GHz with 533 MHz FSB for 232.00. I tried other sites and found them to be more expensive, but googlegear had the best deals. As for shipping and service... I don't know because I just ordered it yesterday, but it should be in about Tuesday or Wednesday. Happy Hunting

SJ

I have the ASUS P4T533 motherboard. I want to pair up the mobo with 2 Western Digital 80Gb Hard Drives. The problem is that no matter what I try the bios DOES NOT recognize the entire drive. Instead it boots up and only reads 33.8Gb. Can anyone help me. I have found some info in the manuals about 33Gb barriers, but I have not definitive way to fix it. I have tried many things and nothing works. The diagnosis tool from Western Digital tells me that the Bios is not recognizing the HD entirely. I also upgraded to the latest bios as listed at the ASUS website. I now have the 1005 version bios installed. Can someone help me? Thanks. Pedro

Pedro, I am using 2 80GB WD hard drives and I am having no trouble with it. How are you connecting them? IDE or RAID?

If connected IDE, did you check the connections and make sure you have one slave and one master drive?

If you are running RAID 0 striping, make sure they are not connected to the same RAID IDE. Use separate cables and connect one hard drive to the primary RAID and the second hard drive to the secondary RAID. Before connecting with RAID, you will need to go to ASUS and download the RAID Promise Controllers to a floppy disk and use it to install WinXP. Otherwise RAID will not be detected.

Also, when you say that 33.6GB is all that you MB detects, I am thinking you have done something I did when first dealing with RAID. I bought an 80GB and a 40GB WD hd, and connected with RAID 0. The MB read my total capacity as around 33 or 34 GB total. After reading up I found that I need identical capacity hard drives... Make sure you DO HAVE TWO 80 GB hard drives. Maybe your hard drives have been mislabeled? Perhaps you should connected one hard drive at a time, and see how much space is available when reinstalling the OS.

One last problem I think it might be...partitioning error. Did you partition your hard drive? Because... I had problems one time where I partitioned my RAID drives before installing WinXP, and instead of 160 GB, I only had a C drive with 30 GB. I had to use Partition Magic Pro 7.0, where you can easily partition hard drives any time. Its a great program I think any computer geek should have. Check it out at http://www.powerquest.com

Let me know if you have any questions.

S J

What about the fact that when I boot the computer and a list of hardware comes up. I always get the Hard Drive reading 33.8Gig instead of 80. I'm thinking that this means I have a BIOS issue. I am setting up the HD's in IDE. Also, I am only setting up one drive at the moment so that I can get going. I disabled the RAID control with the jumper settings. Are there some type of jumper settings I should be looking for on the HD's jumpers?

Thank you very much for the help.

Pedro

Ok, let me get this straight. Right now you only have one hard drive installed on your IDE and this hard drive is reading 33.8GB. Have you tried the other hard drive? Does it give the same reading of 33.8?

I don't think its your BIOS unless you changed it to read the HD in manual instead of AUTO DETECT. Make sure its in AUTO DETECT.

As for the jumpers, it depends on how you have it connected to the MB. If you have a HD connected with the same cable to the CD/DVD ROM, the make sure that the HD is connected at the end of the IDE cable and the CD ROM at the middle. Set the jumpers so that the HD is the Master, and the CD ROM on the Slave. Connect the cable to the primary IDE.

If you have only a HD and nothing else connected to the cable in series, then I believe you can just remove the jumper cable completely and you do not need to leave it to Master jumper setting. This only applies to WD HD from what I remember.

Finally, does it also show 33.8 GB in windows in My Computer? You may want to do an anonymous diagnostics with http://www.pcpitstop.com to check out your HD specs also. Maybe your BIOS is just giving out false info? Give me more details. Good Luck

S J

SJ thanks for the help. It turns out it was the jumper settings all along. What happened is that at the time of assembly we were looking at the "Alternate Jumper Settings" in stead of the regular jumper configurations. The alternate settings are for when you have an older bios that doesn't recognize larger drives. They remidy this by allowing the user to set the jumpers so the bios thinks the drive is smaller then it actually is. This is exacly what was going on. Thanks for the help once again. I'm in the process of setting it up right now. This is my first PC build so I'm a novice, but I'm learning a great deal. You said you have a similar configuration. Are you tailoring your setup for a specific end use? I am interested in getting into audio recording and production. HAve any suggestions on things I should look out for? Any suggestions or comments are welcome. Obrigado (Portuguese for thank you).

Pedro

Hi Pedro, glad I could help and that you found your problem. Well, I am running RAID 0. Actually, before buying the P4T533 a couple of months ago, I had no clue what RAID was. I personally enjoy the performance increase! You should take a look into it. I do everything from website designing, graphics design, and word processing to gaming on my RAID IDEs. I also tested the time it took to install WinXP with RAID compared to another computer using IDE (same processor, MB, etc...) Windows XP took only 11 minutes to install compared to 24 min with the other computer. From what I read, the transfer rate is almost doubled with RAID due to the way the data is saved.

There is also RAID 1, but I dont think you need to get into that because it will slow performance due to mirroring one drive to the other.

With RAID 0, you will take full advantage of the HD capacity. Therefore two 80GB HD will be seen as one HD totalling 160GB.

If you want to partition your HD using RAID 0, do it AFTER installing WinXP. Do not partition during installing the OS because somehow I lost all my partitions and it did not recognize or even see the other partitions.

So, to put it together:
1) Download the RAID Controller drivers from http://www.asus.com and save it to a floppy disk. You will need the disk to install the OS.

2) Make sure you enable the jumpers on the MB to enable RAID again.

3) Follow the instructions to set up the HD for RAID (found on your MB manual). You will want to use RAID 0 striping, and I think it will ask you what you will want the performance enhancement for, audio/video, general, etc...)

2) Install the OS (assuming WinXP), and when the blue screen pops up, press F6 for RAID operation. It will then use the CD's drivers to detect the RAID IDEs, but will fail to detect the HD. Follow the instructions to use your drivers to detect the HDs.

3) After installing the OS, you may want to partition the HDs. I personally like the following configs:
C drive is Windows XP OS
D drive is Program Files
E drive is Games
F drive is My documents including music files, pictures, etc...
G drive is strictly for backups.

You can only partition at this time using Partition Magic Pro 7.0... It unfortunately costs $70...

Good luck.

SJ

SJ.

Interesting setup. I'm sure it performs quite nicely for you. On the disaster/recovery side, however, i'm sure you know that if one of those drives goes bad for some reason you have lost it all. Have you implemented some kind of data back-up scheme?

Thanks,
Dan

Hey S J,
i need some help im new to the whole raid idea first of all ill tell you what im looking at
p4t533 asus motherboard
1gig rambus
2 80 gig western digital 8mb buffer 7200 rpm
and xp pro as my OS
my question: is the p4t533 raid compatiable. do i need any special cables or connectors. and what do i do when it comes to setting the jumpers up for master/slave for raid. also what do i do when partioning do i partition 2 drives or i dont know cause im new to partioning. should i buy the program you recommened earlier in the posts. if you can get back to me that would be great peace ~Kondour~ ps: how do i set the motherboard for raid and is the raid controller different than the other controllers for the cd/burner/dvd thanks again kondour

Hey kondour, the P4t533 does have RAID support. If you look at your MB, you will see 4 IDE slots instead of 2 on other MB. The RAID IDEs are located on the lower right hand corner of the MB, if the CPU is seen on the upper left hand side. You need 2 hard drives. Set them both to MASTER.

You do not need special connectors, just IDE cables. Connect one hard drive to one of the RAID IDE, and the other hard drive to the second RAID IDE.

Now... you need to download the RAID drivers from http://www.asus.com.

As for partitioning...don't partition your drives when installing the OS!!! When I did this, the partitions were lost and I ended up with a HD with about 30 gigs or so space when it should have been 160! With Partition Magic Pro, you will partition the HD AFTER you have installed the OS. You can buy it at http://www.powerquest.com... (or use Kazaa...shhh)

Finally, follow the instructions I am pasting here from a previous response of mine. Good luck.

Pasted:

So, to put it together:
1) Download the RAID Controller drivers from http://www.asus.com and save it to a floppy disk. You will need the disk to install the OS.

2) Make sure you enable the jumpers on the MB to enable RAID again.

3) Follow the instructions to set up the HD for RAID (found on your MB manual). You will want to use RAID 0 striping, and I think it will ask you what you will want the performance enhancement for, audio/video, general, etc...)

2) Install the OS (assuming WinXP), and when the blue screen pops up, press F6 for RAID operation. It will then use the CD's drivers to detect the RAID IDEs, but will fail to detect the HD. Follow the instructions to use your drivers to detect the HDs.

3) After installing the OS, you may want to partition the HDs. I personally like the following configs:
C drive is Windows XP OS
D drive is Program Files
E drive is Games
F drive is My documents including music files, pictures, etc...
G drive is strictly for backups.

You can only partition at this time using Partition Magic Pro 7.0... It unfortunately costs $70...

Good luck.

SJ

How does this apply when using WIN 98 SE?
You have to partition before or the OS will not load. Is this correct? My 2 HDs are 45 gig Deskstars that only show a total of 45 gig with 22 gig available when in raid 0. I tried delpart with no success. As stand alone drives without raid they work fine master and slave with the correct available space. I don t know what to do now other than run them without raid 0.

Any Ideas anyone? Would partion magic work in this case?

Joe