SATA Controller

[Paddy]

Can anyone recommend a good SATA controller. My Asus A7N8X-e or whatever only has the two ports. I currently own two SATA HDs and will buy at least one more with a Plextor 16x Dual layer when they announce.

So I need something that can handle at least four devices. RAID would be nice but not required.

TIA!

[Kurt]

The Promise SATAII-150TX2 Plus PCI (2 SATA + 1 ATA, supports PCI-X too @ 66MHz). Or the 4 ports version.

[DGhost]

The Plextor SATA drives have known compatability issues with most external SATA controllers - mostly due to the fact that many of them do not properly support ATAPI devices if i remember right.

[Paddy]

hmm.. thanks for that! I guess I could always run the Plextor from the mobo...

[rylan]

Yeah no real need for SATA on a optical drive anyway. Just get the IDE version and plug it in the mobo.

[DGhost]

In all likely hood you will have to do that anyways. the A7N8X-E does not have SATA integrated into the chipset. it has an external SATA controller onboard :/

[Wombat]

Originally posted by rylan
Yeah no real need for SATA on a optical drive anyway. Just get the IDE version and plug it in the mobo.

Actually, the optical drives are the thing I want SATA for the <I>most</I>. The opticals are almost always in the top of the case, where the cable isn't long enough, and that wide ribbon is a pain in the ass.

[rylan]

Oh well yeah in terms of cabling SATA is nicer. I was thinking of bandwidth requirements.

[Marshmallowman]

Well the a7n8x is a silicon image 3112A chipset controller, adding another silicon image conmtroller (3112/3114) would proably enable you to use all the ports (onboard and add on) in single raid config (raid 5)..silicon image gear is pretty cheap as well.

But if you are going to use the onbaord for opticals etc and not raiding a lot of drives then a promise is probably a more robust and better solution(and somewhat more expenisive)

[Paddy]

Cheers guys. Can anyone recommed specific models?

[Kurt]

Hum...

Originally posted by Kurt
The Promise SATAII-150TX2 Plus PCI (2 SATA + 1 ATA, supports PCI-X too @ 66MHz). Or the 4 ports version.

[Paddy]

Doh!

[Marshmallowman]

if you only want sata ports

Promise SATA-150TX4 is a few dollars more for 4 ports...

But the tx4 and tx2 don't really support RAID...you have to buy the more expensive sx units or somthing...

(50 % or so more for a raid firmware )

[rylan]

There proably is some info on the wrb on how to change your Promise controller into the raid version. I know there was something stupid like 1 resistor change for their ATA controller and it made it into a raid5 controller.

[DGhost]

only on the old cards - after a few revisions they changed it so that the flash rom for the bios was pulled into the main chip and the resistor mod can no longer be done.