Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > General Storage > Looking for a Reasonably priced PCI SATA Controller w/o RAID

Looking for a Reasonably priced PCI SATA Controller w/o RAID

Forum Storage : General Storage - Looking for a Reasonably priced PCI SATA Controller w/o RAID

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mhmallory   06-07-2009 at 10:33:19 PM

I' m attempting to find a reasonably priced PCI SATA controller for a Compaq EVO D51S. RAID is not a concern because the D51S only has one internal drive bay, and 2 PCI slots. I would like to use SATA II 300GBs, with unattended boot.

TIA
mhmallory

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   06-08-2009 at 03:29:58 PM
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So how many ports? LOL

You can look at the SuperMicro PCI 8-port SATA controller, that is without RAID.

But you can just as well use a (fake) RAID controller and create one-disk arrays, or if you use linux/bsd you will not see the fake RAID but just the disks.

Note that PCI is a shared-access bus, meaning performance could be an issue, especially on servers where lots of I/O take place, the interrupt usage for PCI is also higher.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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mhmallory   06-08-2009 at 08:18:31 PM
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@sub mesa - Thanks for the reply. I'm a little out of my league knowledge wise, but I was looking at the specs and noted the following -

SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card

Will this work in a 32 bit bus machine, or is the PCI bus 64 bit?


Thanks again,

mhmallory

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mhmallory   06-08-2009 at 08:30:58 PM
- 0 +

@sub mesa

I dismantled the the Compaq, and see that the PCI slots are indeed 32 bit. Any other suggestions?

thanks,

mhmallory

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   06-09-2009 at 12:56:07 PM
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PCI-X can be used in PCI slots, provided there is clearance after the PCI slot because the PCI-X card will have more copper connectors. But yes it works.

Still, what are you trying to accomplish? How many ports (= number of harddrives you can connect) do you need? If you only need 2 ports a simple Silicon Image/Promise/JMicron SATA controller will be fine, yes its RAID but you don't really have to use the disks in RAID, you can create 1-disk arrays and use them pretty much as single seperate disks.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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Darron   06-09-2009 at 03:56:51 PM
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Read the original post.
He just wants ONE sata drive installed.
Guess the board doesn't take sata disks by itself, so an IO controller card is needed and he don't want to pay half an arm to buy a super expensive multi raid io card.

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   06-09-2009 at 07:37:18 PM
- 0 +

Quote :

I would like to use SATA II 300GBs


That leads me to believe he needs more than one SATA port.

Truth is, there are not many SATA controllers without RAID, most come with (rudimentary) RAID drivers since its pretty simple to do. So if you want cheap, just pick a $10-$20 PCI controller card. Know that chipsets like Silicon Image SiI-3112/3114 have issues and if possible you should look at newer chipset, although most are for PCI-express nowadays...

Once you have the SATA (fake-)RAID controller, setup single-disk arrays of all disks you want to connect and install the drivers once inside Windows. Sometimes you can choose between AHCI (non-RAID) and RAID-drivers, so pick AHCI if this option is available. If you're not using Windows this is no concern, since it will act like a normal SATA controller (in fact is is.. hardware wise).

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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