sata controller cards

[Red Squirrel]

Are sata controller cards slower then ones built on the motherboard? Also what is the best interface to get?

I'm having trouble finding cards that have a decent port count. The highest I'm finding is 4. I found an 8 but it's PCIx64bit, what exactly is that? Would the p35 neo2 support that? I need to somehow have capacity for 9 sata ports, just lost as to how to get it going. I'm afraid I'll have to use like 2 cards, and PCI is not an option as the video card is taking up one of the two.

 

[corkyg]

If you have 2 PCI slots, you should have a couple of PCI Express slots. Your mobo should have a couple of SATA ports. Add 4 more with PCI Express.

 

[QuixoticOne]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...rollers&name=SATA%20II

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...s%20%2f%20RAID%20Cards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...rs&bop=And&Order=PRICE

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...rs&bop=And&Order=PRICE

You could always get a multi-lane compatible controller and put up to 5 drives on each one of its ports via the use of an external port multiplier device which is widely available to connect its multiple outputs to individual SATA drives.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm hoping to spend 100 or less. I already put like 2 grand into this server, my budget was 1 grand. Also I'm in Canada so its either NCIX.ca or Tigerdirect.ca or other canadian shop for me. We're suppost to be getting a future shop in town though, I so can't wait for that. It's in construction now.

 

[mooseracing]

If you are going for a SATA controller card and don't want a bottle neck after a single drive you need to step up to PCI Express. PCI X is just a higher bandwidth PCI bus more common in server but slowly being replaced by PCI-E.

PCI-E 1x would be suitable for 2 drives
2x 3-4 drives
4x 8 drives.

and so on....

This is assuming you get a good card and the drives are sustaing 100MB/s. Which not many sata II do.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
I'm hoping to spend 100 or less. I already put like 2 grand into this server, my budget was 1 grand.

Dude, you're coming to the server party late.
You should have built your server from the storage subsystem up... IMO :roll:

Since we're on the server storage subject... Interesting review > "Adaptec RAID Controllers Roundup"

 

[Synomenon]

Not meaning to steal the thread, but is a standard PCI slot on a newly released motherboard not enough for a PCI 2.2 card w/ three USB ports and one eSATA I port?

 

[QuixoticOne]

PCI 2.2 will give you a maximum of around 133 MBytes/second transfer rate, less than that if there are limitations / delays within the chipset, the controller, etc. That is approximately enough to take full advantage of one modern commodity 7200 RPM SATA drive of the newest generation high density storage. If you were doing HEAVY disk transfers over eSATA to a fast disk AND HEAVY USB 2.0 high speed transfers at once, you'd certainly encounter some overall slow downs due to the PCI bus.
That isn't a very common / likely situation, though, so in reality it is probably fine to use and won't feel like it is constraining your performance much in the real world typical use cases.

USB 2.0 High speed ports go up to 480Mbits/second or around 48 MBytes/second maximum, or around 1/3rd the PCI bus maximum speed. Thus it isn't really a problem to use the USB ports to the maximum even if they are high speed USB 2.0 ports over a PCI card. You only really run into slow downs with a fast hard disc on the eSATA plus heavy USB activity which really seldom gets into the megabytes/second range UNLESS you're talking to a USB 2.0 high speed hard disc as well...

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
Not meaning to steal the thread, but is a standard PCI slot on a newly released motherboard not enough for a PCI 2.2 card w/ three USB ports and one eSATA I port?

 

[QuixoticOne]

$100 for a 4-9 port SATA controller solution AND with a limited number of options for vendors / retailers, AND with slot type / space / count limitations ? That's pushing it a bit.
Off hand I'd say look into a cheap multilane SATA controller and a port multiplier for it to link up 4 or 5 hard discs per multi-lane port. As it is, though, usually you don't see 2xmultilane port cards all that commonly, and even then that'd be 8 drives if they supported 4/port and not 9 and the availability of products would be questionable from your suppliers.. and the price possibly over budget. Getting two cheap 4 port SATA controllers would be about the best that you can likely do if the slots permit.
The rosewills at newegg are worth looking at.. I have no idea if they're well represented by your available vendors.

 

[Old Hippie]

Since we're on the server storage subject... Interesting review > "Adaptec RAID Controllers Roundup"

Nice read!