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Want very fast primary hard drive (Raptor?) do not have SATA

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davidrees

Senior member
Hello,

I am building a mostly new system. I am keeping my Audigy2 6.1 and my Ti4600 and going to an Asus NF2 board (A7N8X-X) with 1G of HyperX 333 RAM. I will be getting at least an AMD 2800XP.

The board does not have ATA or RAID and I usually run dual hard drives. The first holds the OS and apps/games - the second holds data and install files.

Right now, I have a Quantum 40G 7200rpm as my 1st drive and a Maxtor 80G 5400rpm as my data drive.

The Quantum has been acting a little funny and its a little slow anyway so I want to replace it.

I would like to use the WD360 Raptor drive, but it is SATA. I have seen SATA cards for under $30 and RAID cards for under $50. Is there a big difference in the chipsets and performance? Any to look for or avoid? Will I have many problems booting from an SATA card and leaving my 80G on the EIDE?

Also, I was thinking about getting an SATA RAID card and running a striped set for performance as the primary drive. The Raptors are around $100 and they seem like they are about the fastest. Is there a PATA drive that is close in performance? Will the striped set help me that much? I am mostly a gamer and I play a lot of Planetside so faster Disk I/O would help.

I am leaning towards getting a plain SATA card, a Raptor as the first drive and then a 120G+ drive as the data drive.

Any advice or alternative config suggestions?

Also - with Win2k, will I need to do a preload on my SATA driver like how you do with SCSI? - I can know how, just wondering.
 
Why not get a motherboard that has a SATA-RAID built in? Asus A7N8X Deluxe has it. You can use it eiter in RAID or as indepentant SATA HDs.

And yes, you do need to load the SATA driver like you do with SCSI.

 
Already got mobo.

It is defective and I have to RMA it - so maybe I can trade up...

In the mean time, lets assume I am stuck with it.

Is a PCI SATA card at a disadvantage to an on board controller?
 
Originally posted by: davidrees

Is a PCI SATA card at a disadvantage to an on board controller?
Click to expand...

Let's assume with the Asus A7N8X-Deluxe which has a SATA controller.

No, the PCI SATA card wouldn't be a disadvantage as the SATA controller on the A7N8X-Deluxe (and other current nForce2 boards) are not integrated into the southbridge and use the PCI bus anyways.
 
Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
Originally posted by: davidrees

Is a PCI SATA card at a disadvantage to an on board controller?
Click to expand...

Let's assume with the Asus A7N8X-Deluxe which has a SATA controller.

No, the PCI SATA card wouldn't be a disadvantage as the SATA controller on the A7N8X-Deluxe (and other current nForce2 boards) are not integrated into the southbridge and use the PCI bus anyways.
Click to expand...


I would disagree. I have SB61G2, which has onboard SATA (non-raid) via ICH5 and 2 raptors and now I am booting to windows withing 20 sec. I used to have it setup with Highpoint RocketRaid 1520 add-on Raid card in RAID 0 config, and I did have to load RAID drivers to install WinXP on RAID array, and booting to Windows took 3 minutes, because the card was recognized as SCSI device. I spoke to a guy who had 2 Raptors on ICH5-R built in controller, and also was booting from RAID 0, he said he didn't have delay. So I believe there is a big difference between PCI and built-in solution.
 
Boot up times would be slower because of having to detect the pci card and stuff. But actual drive performance you won't notice a difference.
 
The SATA chip on the A7N8X Deluxe is on the PCI bus, so there's a slight delay in booting Windows. 3 minutes seems very long to boot into Windows. My single Raptor on an A7N8X Deluxe takes a minute from powerup to the XP Welcome screen.
 
Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
3 minutes seems very long to boot into Windows. My single Raptor on an A7N8X Deluxe takes a minute from powerup to the XP Welcome screen.
Click to expand...
I thought it was odd too, but since it was latest drivers,controller BIOS, fresh install of Win XP, after few attempts I presumed that this was just the way it would be for that hardware combination. Trying to get rid of second Raptor and RAID card on FS forums at this moment...

 
i'd get the abit nf7-s ... has SATA built in, and is a great all around board. I had the Asus and sold it so I could get the Abit. The abit is much more stable running 200fsb that my asus ever was.
 
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