Customer Reviews

StarTech.com 2 Port PCI IDE Controller Adapter Card PCIIDE2

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A2 Port PCI IDE Adapter Card, Controller Cards, PC Components, Computers & PC hardwares

I was hoping this PCI card would solve a problem I had upgrading a PC. Many of the newer motherboards only have a single IDE port. This is a problem if you have 4 IDE drives like me (1 hard disk, a DVD/RAM drive, a CDROM RW drive, and an IDE ZIP drive).

I could live without the old ZIP drive, but I still needed a second port to accommodate the second CDROM/DVD drive.

This card advertises the ability to connect up to 4 devices. Can't say if it can, but I found that I could not boot from my hard drive if it was connected to the PCI IDE adapter card.

I also found that it would not recognize my CDROM/RW drive, no matter how it was connected.

I finally managed to connect my boot hard drive and the CDROM/RW drive to the primary IDE adapter on the motherboard (needed a long 80-ribbon IDE cable), and the PCI adapter would recognize both the ZIP drive and the DVD/RAM drive.

So in the end I am happy, but I would caution others who hope the card will support a bootable hard drive - I could not get the card to allow the hard drive to boot (and I've been building systems since the early 1980s).

So it is definitely 'buyer beware'.

Did everything StarTech said it would. Thank you for that! Controller came out of the box with ease and plugged into the PCI slot effortlessly. Rebooted the computer and Win XP recognized the card without a hitch. The 80 conductor cable was easy to hook up but the length could have been 2" longer. My machine has it's card slot way at the bottom of the cage and my optic drives are at the top front of the case. Once connected with an alternate longer cable it worked fine.

I had an issue with my registry not showing or being able to access my optic drives, so once that was corrected my original IDE channel 2 worked properly and I didn't need the board after all.