2-port SATA controller

[miksmi]

I'm looking for a 2-port SATA controller for 2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 80GB disks. The case is a Shuttle SS40G (hence no need for more than 2 ports), AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 512MB RAM, and a single, slow 5400rpm IDE disk.

I use the workstation for photo image conversion (RAW to TIFF) and editing (The GIMP and Picture Window Pro) and it's sluggish. I'll increase RAM to 1GB.

I've run across some posts here that dislike Promise, so does anyone have a favorite SATA controller?

Thanks for your help.

 

[BooST]

I'm running a 3Ware Escalade 8506-4, it's wonderful, I have some experience with Promise stuff, nothing bad to say, other than it took about 18 hours to add a disk to my RAID-5 array...

 

[Clocker]

I'm using a Promise basic SATA150 controller w/o any problems with my 160GB 7K250. It has two SATA ports and an IDE port should you ever need an extra one of those..

 

[blakerwry]

i've never encountered any problem's with promise controllers besides a little choppyness compared to the onboard IDE on some systems.

I would personally, really like a SiS or Intel S-ATA controller, too bad I haven't seen any for sale.

 

[miksmi]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

The Promise SATA150 TX2plus 2-port SATA/150 + 1 ATA/133 looks interesting. It scores well in the Xbit Labs workstation benchmarks Dual-Channel SerialATA RAID Controllers Roundup.

 

[Will Rickards WT]

I like silicon image based products.
Syba makes one : http://www.syba.com/us/en/product/43/02/03/index.html
They are also pretty cheap, less than $40.

 

[Mercutio]

Personally I'll be really happy when I can regularly buy motherboards with native (part of the southbridge, therefore driverless) SATA controllers.

 

[Bozo]

After a bad experiance with Promise RAID controllers and Maxtor hard drives, I've avoided them. (Right GS ???)
Right now I'm using 3Ware.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[blakerwry]

Personally I'll be really happy when I can regularly buy motherboards with native (part of the southbridge, therefore driverless) SATA controllers.

It just depends how the chipset manufacturer choses to implement it... I have native S-ATA on my SiS based Asrock boards, but I believe it requires a driver to operate in windows... same goes for VIA and NVidia. To my knowledge, Intel is the only person to make their S-ATA controller use the same drivers as their IDE controller.

 

[LunarMist]

Personally I'll be really happy when I can regularly buy motherboards with native (part of the southbridge, therefore driverless) SATA controllers.

That would fine if the chipset provided 8 ports. 2 or 4 is not sufficient.

A single, non-RAID Promise controller should work fine.

 

[Clocker]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

The Promise SATA150 TX2plus 2-port SATA/150 + 1 ATA/133 looks interesting. It scores well in the Xbit Labs workstation benchmarks Dual-Channel SerialATA RAID Controllers Roundup.

That's the same card I have with my 7K250. If you want me to run any benchmarks on it, let me know....(not that they would mean much).

C

 

[miksmi]

That's the same card I have with my 7K250. If you want me to run any benchmarks on it, let me know.

Hey Clocker, I looked up the card per your suggestion. The benchmarking offer is appreciated but unneeded. This is my workstation so performance isn't critical but I would like to spruce it up. I think between increasing 512MB->1GB RAM and 5400rpm IDE->2 spindle SATA/150 (non-RAID), I'll be happy.

FWIW this is for a WinXP machine, something left out of my first post. I must be outside the time window for editing my first post.

To hijack my own thread, if using two non-RAID disks for photo image editing (The GIMP and Picture Window Pro, also disk intensive like PhotoShop), how would you distribute: WinXP, swap, programs, image editor work files, and image files? I was thinking of:

C: WinXP, programs, image files
D: swap, image editor work files

Please tell me you wouldn't use a third disk.

 

[Buck]

I would include a third drive. Something similar to this arrangement:

SATA C: WinXP & Applications
SATA D: Image Files & Editor Image Work Files
PATA E: Swap File
PATA F: Optical Drive

If necessary, the E: and F: drives can be combined on the same channel, as the intense swap file activity during image manipulation won't be something you'll do during a CD or DVD burn. It would be ideal to put each drive on its own channel, hence the benefil of SATA and multiple ports (minimum of 8 as was mentioned in another thread) Fortunately, drive E: doesn't need to be a large capacity drive, so an inexpensive 40-gigabyte 7,200-rpm Samsung drive would be perfect.

By the way, if you were using Photoshop, and wanted to be technically stubborn about disk access efficiency, you would have an additional drive (on its own channel) that just contained the Photoshop scratch file.