Are there other options besides PCI to expand my SATA ports?

[fliX]

Title pretty much says it all. I am out of SATA ports and need more for multiple hard drives.

If PCI is the only way, what do you guys recommend?

[MarkOne]

You means PCI-e ... I use an other PC , to put 6 others drives , probably cost me less than a good card.

[jjjc_93]

No he means PCI like he said.. I'm not sure if there are any other options, but I'll have a little look around.

[maxgull]

Originally Posted by fliX

Title pretty much says it all. I am out of SATA ports and need more for multiple hard drives.

If PCI is the only way, what do you guys recommend?

for plain jane storage, or raid arrays?

[davidhammock200]

BIOSTAR TForce6100-939

You are scr3wed! No available 16, 8, or 4 lane PCI-E slots.

For you it is NAS or nothing!

[jjjc_93]

why PCI-E?....
None of these would fit the bill?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...i+sata&x=0&y=0

[fliX]

Ok you have royally confused me. Why would I need PCI-E for a sata card?

Originally Posted by MarkOne

You means PCI-e ... I use an other PC , to put 6 others drives , probably cost me less than a good card.

how?? 6 drives in one PC? And cards are like $40 I was just seeing if there was any other options.

[davidhammock200]

Originally Posted by fliX

Ok you have royally confused me. Why would I need PCI-E for a sata card?


how?? 6 drives in one PC? And cards are like $40 I was just seeing if there was any other options.

PCI Express Bus Tutorial

The standard PCI data rate will bottle neck SATA II HDD's.

That is why we use PCI-E, usually 4X & 8X for high-end RAID controllers. Adapt RAID Controllers

[JJT*90]

Oh please a pci card would be fine. Just don't be running a bunch of HD benchmarks on it.

[Scubar]

Yea PCI card is fine.

I have an 8 port PCI Sata controller card in my WHS Storage PC. As long as you arent going to be transferring large amounts of data to multiple harddrives at the same time you wont have a prooblem with the PCI Bus speed.

Even the newest and fastest SATA Drives only have sustained transfer rate of around 100MB/s. So you could have a couple of Drives maxed out continously and still have abit of extra bandwidth spare on the PCI bus.

If your doing RAID you would need a PCIe Sata controller card. If its just for JBOD any PCI card will be fine.

[fliX]

Can you guys recommend a good cheap card for the price?

[Scubar]

well as you dont need any RAID functionality just pickup any cheap PCI card that has the amount of ports you need or one with a couple of extra ports spare incase you want to expand in the future.

[davidhammock200]

At 33MHz, with a 32-bit data bus, the theoretical maximum data transfer rate of the PCI bus is 132MB/sec.

http://www.tech-pro.net/intro_pci.html

So the burst rate of most good SATA II HDD's exceeds the PCI buss limit, so using the PCI buss for even 1 good SATA HDD limits the HDD's performance!

Using 2 SATA II HDD's & you have maxed out the continuous transfer rate as well!

The PCI-E 1X has a max throughput of 250MB's, so use your PCI-E 1X slot, NOT your PCI slots if at all possible,
this will give about the same performance when using 4X HDD's, as the PCI slot will give you using only 2X HDD's!

If using only 2X HDD's the PCI-E 1X controllers will provide about the same performance as a PCI controller using only 1-HDD!

Of course as your mobo has one PCI-E 1X & two PCI slots, you could use 2 or more controllers.

If access time & transfer rates are unimportant & still living with the facts of software RAID, you will at least be able to move the array without problems as long as the OS is basically the same. Moving from Win anything to Unix probably will not work, but moving from Win 7 to XP should work.

Here are 3 RAID controllers, 2 of them are PCI-E 1X, the other is PCI 2.0.

Best Wishes,
Dave

[fliX]

Originally Posted by davidhammock200

So the burst rate of most good SATA II HDD's exceeds the PCI buss limit, so using the PCI buss for even 1 good SATA HDD limits the HDD's performance!

Using 2 SATA II HDD's & you have maxed out the continuous transfer rate as well!

The PCI-E 1X has a max throughput of 250MB's, so use your PCI-E 1X slot, NOT your PCI slots if at all possible,
this will give about the same performance when using 4X HDD's, as the PCI slot will give you using only 2X HDD's!

If using only 2X HDD's the PCI-E 1X controllers will provide about the same performance as a PCI controller using only 1-HDD!

Of course as your mobo has one PCI-E 1X & two PCI slots, you could use 2 or more controllers.

If access time & transfer rates are unimportant & still living with the facts of software RAID, you will at least be able to move the array without problems as long as the OS is basically the same. Moving from Win anything to Unix probably will not work, but moving from Win 7 to XP should work.

Here are 3 RAID controllers, 2 of them are PCI-E 1X, the other is PCI 2.0.

Best Wishes,
Dave

I definitely appreciate all the information - it is good to know! For now though I just need whatever works. Thanks for linking that PCI-E 1X - I forgot I even had that.

It's okay even if they 1x won't take advantage of SATA II's rates to me because I just need to access these drives and any card would work right now for me.

While PCI 2.0 cards in theory work with PCI-E 1X slots, even if it's not getting the full transfer rates used?

Additional Comment:

Just to make sure, does it matter if I get a RAID card and don't use the raid functionality?