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Promise 4-Port Serial ATA/150 Controller at New Egg for $55.00 ($25.00 bucks cheaper than all others on Pricewatch!!!)

C

Cobra95R

Junior Member
ATA/150 Controller at New Egg for $55.00 ($25.00 bucks cheaper than all others on Pricewatch!!!)


This is a killer deal although I believe only Seagate has a serial ATA drive out on the market now. Western Digital has a killer Serial ATA Hardrive coming out in the next two months that will go nicely with this card. Here is alittle spec on the drive from their website:

"In addition to its 5.2 ms average seek time, 10,000 RPM, 1.2 million hours MTBF and five-year warranty, data throughput is 150 MB/second from the SATA interface. The performance roadmap for SATA extends up to 600 MB/second, ensuring a reliable standard for storage providers and customers in the years ahead".

A 36 gig drive is expected to run about $160.00 dollars.



Here is a link to Western Digital's new ATA Serial Hardrive:

Western Digital



Here is a link to the deal:

New Egg


Here is the specs on the Promise 4-Port Serial ATA/150 Controller ( It's in a PDF format)

Seagate
 
Promise is a good brand, although I don't think this will be a big seller because

1. There aren't really any native SATA drives available yet (there might be one but it's in small supply) and
2. Newer motherboards are already starting to integrate SATA onboard

I guess if you had a system that you absolutely HAD to have SATA for this would be a good deal. Another problem is that SATA->Parallel ATA adaptors are $25 each! I definitely want to move to SATA but I think I will wait until I upgrade mobos and get one with it integrated.

Good price, though, and welcome to the forums!
 
Agree with vetteguy.... Back in the day I bought a Promise ATA100 PCI card and it was an improvement over my ATA33 on my motherboard....

Today's boards have at least std ATA100 or Raid 1000, plus as mentioned above, newer boards come with Serial ATA (Raid and regular).


I just don't see the benifit to using this card......now if it were a true RAID card, it might be worth it, but even an ATA Raid setup barerly benifits from the extra bandwidth.


My $.02
 
Hm. Interesting. I thoguht they were trying to market SATA to compete with SCSI, but it looks like the specs on that WD drive fall short compared to a good number of current U160 drives 🙁
 
If the new Western Digital drive were out right now, I'd definitely buy this card. That new hard drive has to be very cool. I've been looking forward to it for about two weeks now.
 
Wait, PCI max throughput is 133MB/sec, SATA is 150MB/sec....am I missing something here?? Are you required to overclock your PCI bus in order to get max throughput (saturating your bus at the same time...)

Just where the hell is PCI Express when you need it? 😛
 
I guess those 150MB/s are "burst rates" and the sustainable rate will be somewhere, way, way below that. Or do you really believe your ATA133 tranfers data at a constant rate of 133MB/s?

Sorry, but SCSI still kicks ass. Only drawback is the pricetag. But that WD comes with a hefty pricetag itself, and it still is only an IDE drive.
 
Someone explained it to me like this:

Think of regular ATA interface as your old serial port. Sllooowwwww....

Now think of SCSI as your parallel port. Fast, but antiquated and expensive. Relies on parallel connections which require more complex chipsets and cables, thus increasing cost and making speed upgrades even more difficult and expensive. Hot-pluggable was a nightmare to get working...

Now imagine Serial ATA is your USB port. Instantly faster than serial and parallel ports, even though its a serial connection (though a blazing fast one!) Easier to ramp up in speeds, as witnessed by the jump from 11mbps in USB 1.1 to ~400 mbps in USB 2. SATA is at 150mbps right now, but is expected to hit 600mbps pretty soon. Of course there are no disk drives that can take advantage of all that throughput at once (you'd need what, a 30,000 rpm drive?? Or a solid-state disk?) But imagine a RAID setup with four 150mbps drives and you get the picture! Also, it uses MUCH simpler cabling, signaling etc., and its designed around being hot-pluggable. And there's none of that SCSI ID and terminator crap either (THANK GOD!!!)
 
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