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More HDD's!

Tau

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Well, over the next day or two i will be putting a new fileserver together (in house, right now i have 4 500GB HDD's to go in her). It is actually a spare machine that i have right now (used to be an HTPC, but i just upgraded that one) specs are;

478 P4 3.0c @ 4Ghz
Asus P4c 800 Delux
1GB Ram (might put another gig in it because i can)
9600AIW

Now i have some more harddrives arriving here soon though this motherboard does not have enough Sata ports (it is even lacking Sata2) But since it is going to be a file server i dident think i would notice the speed.

My question is, i will be getting some PCI Sata controllers so that i can plug some more drives in, and i am on the fence about getting regular Sata controllers, or Sata2 controllers.

I can get the Sata controllers for ALOT less than the Sata2's (like 30-50 less) and i will be probobly putting 3-4 controllers in here.

Would i really notice the speed diffrence on a fileserver (full of music, movies, iso's, other dead storage. All PC's will be pulling large files from this server, only real constant network traffic would be for the HTPC. Also note that the entire network is Gigabit.

I am trying to weigh the cost/performance value, and im kinda thinking the Sata1 cards would do the job, since the only thing that the host machine would be doing is, Serving files, being a VPN gateway, getting Remote Desktoped into...
 

smig

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maybe you better go with a new motherboard that support 4 or 6 SATA2.
if you pick a nForce one you'll be able to set the system in RAID array.
 
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I dont think so, because mostly SATA runs at about 75 mb/s. That is still nowhere close to the threshold of SATA 150 mb/s. SATA II runs at 3GB, but you will never reach that. Also, the only difference I see would be the 'burst' rate. but if your jsut streaming music and video, then your nto really using the burst anyways. So, I would save the coin and go for the cheaper ones.
 
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maybe you better go with a new motherboard that support 4 or 6 SATA2.
if you pick a nForce one you'll be able to set the system in RAID array.

Or hehe yeah, if you can find a compatible board for your agp vide card, and older socket processor with onboard raid and sata controllers, then that might be cheaper that buying 4 sata cards. It would save space and power too. But might be virtually impossible to find nowadays unless you do the cross your fingers used from ebay. Either way, to answer your original question, I would run the cheaper ones.
 
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As long as you don't have more than 2-3 clients at once you won't see performance issues caused by the PCI bus. The onboard Gbit will bottleneck before that. Of course you can get an additional NIC though this will share bandwidth with the PCI controllers. So I think your limit lies there. However seeing how you will use it more as a storage cabinet you should be fine.
Buying cheap $10 SATA controller off ebay should suffice in this case as well.

On another note, the 9600 is a waste of energy, it'll just generate heat. Same with the overclock, put it back at stock. The faster CPU won't do you any good, it'll only cause issues.
 

cdawall

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i 2nd the removal of the oc and 9600 snag a FX5200 or 6200
 
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i 2nd the removal of the oc and 9600 snag a FX5200 or 6200

Even a 6200 and 5200 are overkill. My server runs without videodrivers for instance. Just "standard VGA". It is managed via RDC which creates its own virtual adapter, ie no issues with colors, resolutions or performance.
I would just put in some simple PCI card, it won't take away much of your bandwidth since it's not doing anything.
 

cdawall

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Even a 6200 and 5200 are overkill. My server runs without videodrivers for instance. Just "standard VGA". It is managed via RDC which creates its own virtual adapter, ie no issues with colors, resolutions or performance.
I would just put in some simple PCI card, it won't take away much of your bandwidth since it's not doing anything.

so like a radeon 7500 or something right?
 
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so like a radeon 7500 or something right?

I used to use a 2MB S3 Trio, my current board has an on board Z7. Seriously, what purpose would a 7500 have? The worse the card is the better, which is quite a contradictory statement.
 

cdawall

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I used to use a 2MB S3 Trio, my current board has an on board Z7. Seriously, what purpose would a 7500 have? The worse the card is the better, which is quite a contradictory statement.

lol i was just thinking super cheap AGP cards you can get a new 7500 fro like $10 on the egg
 

cdawall

where the hell are my stars
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Tau

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Wow lots of replys when i was sleeping ;)

I figure the slower drives should be fine anways since the faster ones only really have the advantage of NCQ, and the PCI buss is limited to 133MB/s anyways...

A new motherboard is out of the question, since i dont feel like hunting for a 478 mobo, and this Pc4800Delux was the best 478 motherboard released so im happy with it. I cant switch to a PCI videocard as im going to fill all the PCI slots with controllers, so the 9600 will stay, its passivly cooled, so does not make any noise, hell maybe ill underclock it like mad too. Cpu makes minimal noise (this all came out of my old HTPC wich was nearly silent) as it has an XP-90 + 120mm fan on it.

Thanks for the input guys, i will be ordering the controllers today.
 
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