SATA Card Suggestions?
 

I got a decent Sony VAIO with A/V equipment and I'm going to transform the thing into a Media Center type PC. Generic little comp, 2.4ghz Intel P4, 512mb PC-2700.

Thing is, I donated it's 80GB PATA drive to my 'rents. Redoing their onboard RAID-1 array wasn't worth the time (after the mobo went awry), so now I've gotten a pair of identical Seagate SATA 80GB drives.

I figured I'll throw them into this new box using a PCI card and run in RAID-0. Maybe I won't, considering the PCI bus will give me very little for bandwidth. Either way, I need a way to pop some SATA drives into this computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132006

I found that, looks meh, but it would get the job done. You know, now that I think about it - nix the RAID-0. I'd need a good deal of video storage, so I'll run 'em separate.

Suggestions on cheap SATA cards or IDE->SATA doohickeys?

PCI gives you 1 Gb/s or 133 MB/s it will be plenty for a RAID card, with a few drives, as well as the rest of the system peripherals that reside on the PCI bus.

as for raid cards, you get what you pay for, if you pay $25, you get $25 worth. I'd recommend 3ware if you are serious about RAID.

remember, if one drive dies, all the data is gone with RAID 0.

btw, with my 4 drives in RAID 0, i top out at about 0.8 Gb/s for sustained transfers, so with your 2 drives, you will not be limited by your PCI bus unless you have a lot of extra things attached to it.

I've had my fill of cheap Si based boards, then again you aren't doing anything exotic. Rosewill issues would make their product my last choice though.

Maybe try this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816110002 Funky, loads of ports, and cheap cache-backed hardware RAID. Or maybe one of the low-end Promise cards like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816102061

don't do RAID 3 for a system disk, NEVER DO RAID 3 WITH A SYSTEM DISK!

NEVER EVER USE RAID 3 WITH A SYSTEM DISK!


*cough* sorry bout that... Raid 3 stripes the bytes, making simultaneous disk access impossible. it's great for doing a few things at once on a data only drive, but for an OS, its crazy...

beyond that, 5 ports is nice, looking at the specs it did not say it supported RAID 0+1, you could always make 2 RAID 0's and then do a software RAID 1.

(*cough*)onlytwodrivesandcheap(*cough*)

the never use raid 3 was not directed at you cyrnel, it just slips out when i see raid 3... i did a study of different RAID in one of my classes, watching a RAID 3 struggle through windows is hilarious. but it looks like a nice card, 5 ports for $40 gets my thumb up.

good find cyrnel

I like the 5-port card, gives me room to throw in more storage when I need it. I'll probably grab one of those.

Only thing is, as I said, think it'd run alright with other cards on the same bus?

let me give you an example. my server (being replaced tomorrow) has 2 raid controllers on the PCI bus, a 10/100 NIC and a gigabit NIC, I'm reaching the limits of my PCI bus, so i am upgrading, you'll be just fine.

What is your chipset and CPU, though?

I'll be running: 10/100NIC, TV tuner / video input, audio, and that SATA card.

asus a7v600-x with an AMD XP 2700, 768 megs of RAM.

one thing to keep in mind, make sure you check the manual to see which PCI slots share IRQ's, make sure you don't use ones that share with others, that can kill your performance.

Righto. I've got half a gig in there, maybe I'll be able to score some more RAM and cram up to a gig in there but I doubt it.

I never knew that. I don't think I've ever come across any documentation in manuals that specified which IRQ's don't share. :/

the IRQ assignments should be in the motherboard manual.

I don't have that, I'll have to look up the mobo and grab the specs. :)