Updated: 2002.01.25

Alchemy ATA 133 PCI FAQ

Q: Is the Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PC compatible?
A: No. The Alchemy ATA card is only compatible with PowerMac PCI systems

Q: Does the Alchemy ATA 133 PCI support hardware Raid level 0?
A: Yes. The Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PCI offers hardware based Raid level 0 support and is the best solution to see high performance improvements

Q: Does the Alchemy ATA 133 PCI support hardware Raid level 1?
A: No. This feature is not supported at the hardware level at this time. You can however use a software based solution to create a Raid level 1. A software based Raid level 1 setup will only be compatible either in Mac OS 9 or in Mac OS X, but not in both. This third party issue should be fixed as soon as SoftRaid, FWB, Intech, Charismac or any other company providing disk utilities release a Mac OS X update to their applications.

Q: How many drives can I connect to the Alchemy ATA RAID card?
A: If you use the card in RAID mode, it is best to connect only two drives of the same size and speed. You can connect two other drives to create another array, but this is not recommended as the performance may be affected when writing simultaneously to both arrays. If you use the card in standard mode, without the RAID feature, you can connect 4 independent drives. Note that ATA cables have a maximum length for good performance and this may prove to be an issue in PowerMacs G3 and G4. On PowerMacs G4, you can connect a master and a slave in the dual drive bay, but it is not possible to connect a master in the left bay and a slave in the middle bay (due to the restricted length of the cable).

Q: I have moved a drive from the internal IDE bus to the Alchemy ATA card and my drive will not mount on the desktop
A: Drives formatted when connected to the internal bus cannot be mounted when connected to the Alchemy card. You can however update the drivers with FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit or perform a driver conversion with Intech's SpeedTools. Another solution is to reinitialise the hard drive.
Drives formatted with the disk utility shipping with Mac OS 10.1 can be moved from one bus to the other without any other steps.

Q: Can I connect a CD-R+W or DVD drive to the Alchemy card?
A: No.

Q: What tool/utilility should I use to format drives connected to the Alchemy card?
A: The Alchemy card is compatible with most disk utilities. Apple's Drive Setup, FWB's Hard Disk ToolKit 4.x and Intech SpeedTools have all been tested and found 100% compatible.

Q: I have a PowerMac G4 or an ATA 66 card. If I install an Alchemy card, will the data transfer rates of my hard drive(s) increase?
A: The Alchemy ATA 133 PCI provides more bandwidth than your ATA 66 bus. This does not mean that your drives will "go faster". The fastest drives shipping today do not really exceed 66 MB/s. The Alchemy card will give you a benefit in performance when connecting two drives on the same bus (master/slave).
PowerMac 73/9600, Beige G3, B&W G3 and G4/PCI owners will see a major performance improvement compared to their ATA-3 or ATA-33 built-in controllers.

Q: I have connected a drive larger than 137 GB to the Alchemy ATA 133 PCI card and drive setup will only format it as a 128 GB volume.
A: Make sure you are using the latest firmware update available from the support page. If you already have formatted the drive once as a 128 GB volume, you will need to format it again when connected to the Alchemy card.

Q: What is the Mac OS 10.1 update in the support section? I thought the card did not require any drivers.
A: This update is only necessary if you are using a drive larger than 137 GB and Mac OS X (10.1). This is a limitation of the current release of Mac OS X, which should be fixed in the next major update.