SATA-PCI interface...Good? Good Enough? Freakin' HELP!!!

[megawhompertoo]

Hi folks...

I have a p4 3.0E, 1gb 400mhz single channel mem, an x800xt AIW, and 160gb hd crammed into an antec Sonata 1 w/a380W PSU.

My question: I see great deals on SATA drives all the time. This is the one I want:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152025&ATT=22-152-025&CMP=OTC-B1zrat3

So, if I get a PCI interface (1.5 gb/s) (something like this):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124020

will I get decent enough performance out of a SATA drive until I upgrade to a native SATA motherboard? My expectation would be yeah, as PCI interfaces support those sorts of speeds, but I wonder if any of you out there have actually tried using a SATA drive via a PCI interface. Buying the drive and up upgrading to a SATA supported socket 478 MOBO is out of the question, so thank you for not suggesting that.

Help if you can, if you can't, then just offer your suggestions, fanboyisms, and whatever else. I appreciate any (even fanboyisms) info you have.

Thanks!!!

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: SATA-PCI interface...Good? Good Enough? Freakin' HELP!!!

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t167167.html

Hope that helps a little.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: SATA-PCI interface...Good? Good Enough? Freakin' HELP!!!

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t167167.html

Hope that helps a little.

thanks. that thread, however, was somewhat inconclusive--although I believe the max bandwidth quoted by one of the posters is accurate. i'm going to get the drive + pci controller and give it a shot. [edit].95gb/s should be good enough. i need the extra space anyway, and even if it's a little slow, i'll bet it beats my current second hd (14.4gb udma 4 w/no cache). the second hd will be used exclusively for video editing, windows pagefile, and media storage.

plus, it'll give me a leg up when i actually decide to throw good money into a new system in a couple of years.

[LoD]

Re: SATA-PCI interface...Good? Good Enough? Freakin' HELP!!!

Your on the right track picking up a SATA drive. IDE ports are disappearing from new chipsets/mobos, in fact the stuff launching this summer will only have 1 IDE channel, with support for two devices. For future proofing, definately get SATA.

Your best options would be either a SATA --> IDE adapter, or one of those PCI or PCIe SATA controllers.

The bandwidth limitations will not hurt you very much, unless your a hardcore benchmarker, or extreme file transfer guru, you wont notice any performance hit. The PCI bus is shared with all devices, so it can become a bottleneck, but in most cases it wont.

PCI harddrive + PCI ethernet + PCI soundcard + PCI firewire controller etc... can create a bottleneck but it depends on your usage and how your mobo is laid out, some have the ethernet directly tied to the chipset, others run it off the PCIe bus etc... so on and so forth.

Just make sure to get a decent controller, Promise chips are what most motherboard that have 3rd part RAID controllers ship with, I would probably aim for one of those.

Just remember that most controllers cannot power a CD drive.. but that isnt what you look like you plan on using, so no worries.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: SATA-PCI interface...Good? Good Enough? Freakin' HELP!!!

Thanks. I have a pretty cramped mATX mobo (ASUS p4s800-mx). On the other hand, I only have two PCI ports so I'm thinking that having the soundcard and a SATA-PCI pushing one HD wouldn't hurt.

SATA-EIDE adapter...hmmm, there's something I hadn't thought about that much. That may be worth checking out!

Your on the right track picking up a SATA drive. IDE ports are disappearing from new chipsets/mobos, in fact the stuff launching this summer will only have 1 IDE channel, with support for two devices. For future proofing, definately get SATA.

Owwwwww...mannnnn!!!! That bites and I fear change! I've got two nice EIDE opti's I need to run, and I also want to keep my primary EIDE HD. Crap. Maybe I'll drop it into a external enclosure when I finally do upgrade with a new build (whenever 6.0ghz processors fall under $200). Of course, by then my 160gb EIDE opti might "feel" like my 14.4gb does now.