Need a little help here. I have an acer m1610 desktop with http://www.burn-media.co.uk/great_ [...] 6-p-1.html motherboard. It has 2 Sata ports so one is being used by existing hard drive and the other by the dvd drive. I bought a larger hard drive and want to add it but have no more sata ports. anyone can suggest a good sata controller? I will not be using raid. Another thing I thought of is to get a new ide dvd drive and use the other sata for my new hard drive. any suggestions or help is appreciated.

Getting an IDE dvd drive would probably be the cheapest option... especially as everything else is switching over to SATA anyways.

However, I don't really think it would overly matter too much which controller card you get. I would suggest getting something relatively cheap from any good name company. Check places like newegg.com... everyone seems to like them.

If IDE was going to be around for awhile could go for an IDE HD... but that would be a waste of money... could probably not transfer it over to a new computer when it comes time to upgrade... since yours doesn't seem like it's that old.

What the.... Why support SATAII if you are only going to put two connectors on the motherboard? Even my old S754 rig supports 6 SATA ports.

I'm not sure I'd bother getting IDE drives or cards. Just get either an external box, or buy the encloser. It does support a lot of USB ports, might as well use them.

cool. I think I will just buy a high rated controller from newegg. thanks.

Hmm.... I think there are also SATA to USB converters as well, of course performance might suffer but better something than nothing.

I agree with maximaseefu, look for a controller to plop into a pci (or pci-x) slot.

I think you meant PCIe, not PCIx. PCIe is the new serial form of PCI. PCIx is something else, and is found on server motherboards. Not trying to be a smart @$$, just don't want the OP to go out and buy something that won't fit in his computer.

get a port multiplier....

I have only heard of them, never actually seen a SATA port multiplier.

Why not get a new motherboard? Just food for thought.

With only 2 ports, i would buy a PCIe x1 sata controller, any one will do with just a couple of ports, and move the dvd drive to it. The onboard sata will likely get better performance, so that is where you will want to plug in the second hard drive.

Go to newegg, and just go by the best rating for the controller.

Here's an alternative to consider (assuming you bought a 500 GB or are willing to return what ya bought):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822122020

External NAS $399 w/ 500 GB .... add in your new 500 GB (It comes with a 7200.11) and you have 500 GB of RAID storage.