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SATA cards?

M

Mr Bob

Golden Member
I have ran out of SATA slots, and need a large capacity hard drive, but all of the IDE ones are just too expensive!

If I get an SATA drive I will need another slot, but my motherboard doesn't have anymore.

What should I be looking for in terms of SATA cards? I will only EVER need 1 slot on the card. Anything more than 1 will be taking up extra space.

I don't plan on doing raid either. I want something inexpensive, but good. I don't want it to be the reason a drive fails.

Any suggestions? Reviews? Links? I'm ready to go read.
 
Just get the IDE drive. What you pay for the SATA expansion plus the new SATA drive will be equivalent to the IDE drive you are actually looking at.

Otherwise, if you have the brackets available (or space thereof), you can try pricegrabber.com for free quotes.
 
Many retail Maxtor drives come with a SATA controller, they are generally basic controllers that would cost about $20 alone. Most all controller cards have more than one SATA port (it doesn't take up any more space than the one card already does anyhow), so just about any card will do. I'd almost be willing to send you a SATA card, if I had any. I haven't bought a retail drive in years...

\Dan
 
Well, I changed my mind on the drive and it looks like I am going to get this one instead: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101544

I'll have to order this tomorrow, my 320gb says there is 0 bytes left, some others are down to KB, and I got one with 30mb.

But this drive does NCQ, so it doesn't look like the other card above will work. Is there like a good place that does reviews on these cheapo cards? I need to go read about them just because I have no clue at all what to look for.
 
But the price for a retail box wouldn't justify the included SATA card.
Click to expand...
I guess that depends on what other features you want/need. I was just in CompUSA and almost grabbed a 300GB SATA drive with 16MB cache for under $180.00. Though I honestly don't recall if it had a controller card. Even if it doesn't I have found price difference is usually around $10 for models that carry the cards vs those that do not. Either way, the drive you are getting is fine too.

However, if the drive is to be used in a desktop environment, I'd disable NCQ, as it generally hurts performance more than helps unless it is used in a server environment.

\Dan
 
I guess that depends on what other features you want/need. I was just in CompUSA and almost grabbed a 300GB SATA drive with 16MB cache for under $180.00. Though I honestly don't recall if it had a controller card. Even if it doesn't I have found price difference is usually around $10 for models that carry the cards vs those that do not. Either way, the drive you are getting is fine too.
Click to expand...
- There is a HUGE difference in price when you compare 300gb drives to 400gb drives. Right now the 250gb SATAs have about the best $ per GB.

I'd be happy to buy the retail one if the difference is only around $10 more with a controller card. I've checked bestbuy, compusa, staples, and found nothing that is close to the $230 price I get with ZZF. If you have any links to these deals I will gladly take a look.
 
I don't see anything right now either. I'm not trying to talk you out of the drive you've picked, I was just saying and comparing what I saw with what (I thought) you linked (when I looked again, I wasn't. I'm sorry, I thought I saw 320GB drive in your link, looking again I see 400GB - maybe my sleep deprived mind grabbed hold of the 320 in your post...). So never mind my post, since I thought i was actually comparing 2 somehat similar products.

\Dan
 
Silicon Image chipset. Period. Brand of actual card does not matter. RAID features do not matter. It will work, and be fast (you'll remain disk limited), with no hassles, and that will be true for any OS you throw at it (Windows works great, and the SI chips have worked well in Linux and BSDs for ages, now).

Should be <$20 shipped from a nice store like ZZF or Newegg.

You do not need any features of SATA II/2.5, like NCQ. Such features give the drives a decent run in multi-user workloads, not desktop. 300MB/s does offer slight increases for some desktop workloads, but it still tends to be small, <=10%, and not in every case.

I was going to link to the Koutech, but the Syba linked by spc hink is the same card 🙂 (...and I mean right down to the screening).
 
Originally posted by: Cerb
Silicon Image chipset. Period. Brand of actual card does not matter. RAID features do not matter. It will work, and be fast (you'll remain disk limited), with no hassles, and that will be true for any OS you throw at it (Windows works great, and the SI chips have worked well in Linux and BSDs for ages, now).

Should be <$20 shipped from a nice store like ZZF or Newegg.

You do not need any features of SATA II/2.5, like NCQ. Such features give the drives a decent run in multi-user workloads, not desktop. 300MB/s does offer slight increases for some desktop workloads, but it still tends to be small, <=10%, and not in every case.

I was going to link to the Koutech, but the Syba linked by spc hink is the same card 🙂 (...and I mean right down to the screening).
Click to expand...

Correct. There is a performance differance between controller cards. Silicon Image is your best choice in the budget catagory. If you extra cash to spend then there are better and faster choices.

Since his motherboard supports PCI-express, then why are all of you recommending PCI? Take a load off that Antique BUS and give the hard drive some dedicated bandwith.

Choose from this list of fine SATA Cards.


Here is my first choice
Areca PCI-express x8 (place in an unused x16 slot)

My second pick is slower than the first pick shown above.
Highpoint PCI-express x4 (will fit his motherboard)
 
If you have a lot of multi-user disk access, think about going SCSI. If you?re serious about this backup stuff (almost 2TB??) get a stand alone dedicated to it with SATAII RAID5 (some snap server for example). I assume anything that needs that much space must be relatively important or you wouldn't be keeping it around... how do you have a backup server without redundant drives?

Edit: Fry's had a 300GB IDE/133/8mb for 99.99 today.
 
Silicon Image is your best choice in the budget catagory. If you extra cash to spend then there are better and faster choices.
Click to expand...
- Hmm, the only 2 ones that say Silicon Image (from the Newegg link) are refurbished, and I don't like refurbished hardware.

Since his motherboard supports PCI-express, then why are all of you recommending PCI? Take a load off that Antique BUS and give the hard drive some dedicated bandwith.
Click to expand...
- Are there any decent deals on a PCI-express one? My x16 slot is being used by my video card, so I only have one of the x4 slots left, and also the card you linked to is $299, way over my budget.

If you have a lot of multi-user disk access, think about going SCSI.
Click to expand...
If you?re serious about this backup stuff (almost 2TB??) get a stand alone dedicated to it with SATAII RAID5 (some snap server for example).
Click to expand...
- Too expensive.

maybe my sleep deprived mind grabbed hold of the 320 in your post...). So never mind my post, since I thought i was actually comparing 2 somehat similar products.
Click to expand...
- Ahh... I feel your pain. I woke up this morning after 5 hours of sleep just to study for 6 hours straight to find out the test was a lot easier than it was supposed to be. Now I get to repeat the same thing tomorrow with another class :/

Thanks everyone for taking your time to try and help me out.
 
Originally posted by: acole1
If you have a lot of multi-user disk access, think about going SCSI. If you?re serious about this backup stuff (almost 2TB??) get a stand alone dedicated to it with SATAII RAID5 (some snap server for example). I assume anything that needs that much space must be relatively important or you wouldn't be keeping it around... how do you have a backup server without redundant drives?

Edit: Fry's had a 300GB IDE/133/8mb for 99.99 today.
Click to expand...

That is if he had the money. SCSI could be a dying star. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of the technology but SAS looks like it is set to take it's place. The only think SCSI has going for it to keep it alive for another 10 years or maybe more is i-SCSI. SAS or Serial Attached SCSI will most likely take over U320 or U640 when It arrives.

SCSI does provide good single user performance when compaired to ATA drives. It's abilty to operate in full duplex with multilple drives reading and writing on the same bus simultaniously in full duplex with error control is an advantage it has over SATA and other ATA technologies or drives.
 
Originally posted by: Mr Bob
Silicon Image is your best choice in the budget catagory. If you extra cash to spend then there are better and faster choices.
Click to expand...
- Hmm, the only 2 ones that say Silicon Image (from the Newegg link) are refurbished, and I don't like refurbished hardware.
Click to expand...
Get a non-refurbished, then. Newegg has several--if not right now, ZZF surely has some. It's the SI31xx chip that's important.
 
Originally posted by: Googer
Originally posted by: acole1
If you have a lot of multi-user disk access, think about going SCSI. If you?re serious about this backup stuff (almost 2TB??) get a stand alone dedicated to it with SATAII RAID5 (some snap server for example). I assume anything that needs that much space must be relatively important or you wouldn't be keeping it around... how do you have a backup server without redundant drives?

Edit: Fry's had a 300GB IDE/133/8mb for 99.99 today.
Click to expand...
That is if he had the money. SCSI could be a dying star. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of the technology but SAS looks like it is set to take it's place. The only think SCSI has going for it to keep it alive for another 10 years or maybe more is i-SCSI. SAS or Serial Attached SCSI will most likely take over U320 or U640 when It arrives.

SCSI does provide good single user performance when compaired to ATA drives. It's abilty to operate in full duplex with multilple drives reading and writing on the same bus simultaniously in full duplex with error control is an advantage it has over SATA and other ATA technologies or drives.
Click to expand...
Purely for storage, with light load, ATA is great. Cheap and simple for the space, and it's reliable (unless you're doing tons of torrents on the drive 24/7, or something).
 
You might regret not investing the extra money in raid 5 when you have a HD crash and you lose 300GB+ of data. Sounds like an investment to me. But of course you might not have anything real important stored. Just don't come crying here if you lose it all in the quest to save money. 😉
 
Originally posted by: acole1
You might regret not investing the extra money in raid 5 when you have a HD crash and you lose 300GB+ of data. Sounds like an investment to me. But of course you might not have anything real important stored. Just don't come crying here if you lose it all in the quest to save money. 😉
Click to expand...
- The data I care about is backed up twice 🙂

The drives that are not backed up are the ones that store my backed up dvds. If one of those drives die, I just RMA it, and then burn my DVDs back onto the drive. Takes me about 6 minutes to fully burn a 1 to 1 copy (zero compression, zero quality loss, around 7.5gb in size). The way I am using the drives, makes it about the best price for the storage solution I need. There are a ton of "better" ways of doing what I need, but the price for that is not in my range.

Get a non-refurbished, then. Newegg has several--if not right now, ZZF surely has some. It's the SI31xx chip that's important.
Click to expand...
- I looked last night, and again this morning, cheapest one they have is like $50+
 
Originally posted by: Mr Bob
Originally posted by: acole1
You might regret not investing the extra money in raid 5 when you have a HD crash and you lose 300GB+ of data. Sounds like an investment to me. But of course you might not have anything real important stored. Just don't come crying here if you lose it all in the quest to save money. 😉
Click to expand...
- The data I care about is backed up twice 🙂

The drives that are not backed up are the ones that store my backed up dvds. If one of those drives die, I just RMA it, and then burn my DVDs back onto the drive. Takes me about 6 minutes to fully burn a 1 to 1 copy (zero compression, zero quality loss, around 7.5gb in size). The way I am using the drives, makes it about the best price for the storage solution I need. There are a ton of "better" ways of doing what I need, but the price for that is not in my range.

Get a non-refurbished, then. Newegg has several--if not right now, ZZF surely has some. It's the SI31xx chip that's important.
Click to expand...
- I looked last night, and again this morning, cheapest one they have is like $50+
Click to expand...


Sounds good :thumbsup: 🙂
 
But I still don't have a viable solution to my original problem of finding an SATA card 🙁

spc hink suggested this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124006
But then others have mentioned that I need something with the Silicon Image chipset, and it doesn't appear this one has it.

Then evilsaint suggested this one: http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3864957?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
This actually comes with the Silicon Image SIL3112A chipset, which is what others have told me get above.

Googer pointed me over to the Newegg's list, but none that are at a low cost use the Silicon Image chipset.

And then a suggestion for ZZF, but their cards are all $50+

-----

After reviewing the suggestions, it appears the one @ outpost is 1) In my price range 2) Utilizes the Silicon Image chipset that others have suggested

Anyone see a problem with going that route? Any better suggestions? If another $10 is going to get me something a lot better, I feel that would be worth it. This Seagate has support for NCQ, but the card doesn't. This drive will hold data I care little about, and will rarely be accessed, is NCQ something I need? I heard that it isn't even possible atm to take advantage of SATAII (the 300 mb/s) due to some limitation (could be wrong tho), but if that's true, then there shouldn't be a problem with having a card that doesn't support SATAII.

Would it be better for me to connect two of my most use drives to the pci card, as opposed to being directly connected to the motherboard?
 
Cerb, just saw your reply after replying above.

I don't see anywhere on those links the mention of a silicon image chipset.

I decided to take a look at the Newegg reviews anyways, and noticed a lot of people mention these cards began causing tons of issues, some didn't quite work out of the box, etc.. I usually take Newegg reviews with a gain of salt, but this seems to be quite a few people with the same complaint.

Are my expectations of a ~$20~$25 card too high? Should I be searching for something around $50? I don't want this card to be the bottleneck of my hard drives, if it is going to ruin my data, and an extra $20-$30 would get me something better, I would rather do that.
 
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