Add-on SATA II card

[freaksavior]

Google didn't help much

Is there one specific add-on card that is better than the other? I'm not concerned about raid since the RocketRaid 2640 that I have now sucks as it is, and it's slow. I'm moving away from using them as raid and just using add-on cards but I can't configure them as independent drives, it's jbod or raid.

Id love to get an 8 port raid card with ram on it but I don't feel like dropping the $400+ on one.


So suggestions?

Also the rr cards I have will/are for sale if/when I get something to replace them.

 

[freaksavior]

no input?

 

[unholythree]

One of the biggest things to consider (beside driver support) is the bandwidth from the controller itself to your motherboard. A 1x PCIe card is only going to give you a 2.5 Gbps even if the card itself connects to the drives at 3 Gbps.

For example: I have a cheapie controller card that uses a Sil3132 chip http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=32
It has 2 SATA 3.0 Gbps connectors, but the fastest I could access any one dive through that single 1x pipeline is at 2.5 Gbps. You have to consider the bottleneck of the PCI or PCIe bus; especially if you will be accessing multiple drives at the same time.

It's that (among other things) that make the difference between cheap and expensive controllers, and a fact that sellers aren't going to readily point out.

 

[xBruce88x]

what slots are available on your motherboard? I'd get a controller that can make use of pci-e 4x at least

nvm i see that yours are 4x

 

[freaksavior]

pci-e 1x and pci no 4x and the 16 is by a video card.

 

[xBruce88x]

you might be better off upgrading your motherboard to one with another x16 (and keep the rr)

 

[freaksavior]

No it won't.

It's a 1x card, and I don't want to run raid anymore. I'm tired of it failing from not being ES drives so Im just going to run them all as independent.

 

[xBruce88x]

ah my bad. google linked me to the "x4" model rather than the "x1" model. so i'm guessing yours is the RocketRaid 2640X1. i searched RocketRaid 2640 and apparently there are 2 diff versions, one being pci-e x4 and the one you have so that's why i was thinking a motherboard upgrade would help. but it seems the 1x bandwidth is your issue. so i guess you would have to upgrade both if you want to use a raid card or run the drives as independent. sorry i couldn't really help

 

[freaksavior]

^ Yeah

no big deal. It was easily mistaken.

Currently I have 3 x 1.5tb's in JBOD and 3 x 2tb hooked to the mobo.

One drive is dead essentially since I can't use the card as an addon sata port which is totally gay.

 

[xBruce88x]

if you just want a couple extra ports this would work StarTech 2 Port PCI Express Internal SATA Controll...

 

[unholythree]

I don't think a PCIe 1x or PCI card would be that terrible as long as you don't plan to use a software raid, or read/write from more than a drive or two at a time. Find a cheap card with a well supported controller like something from Silicon Image or Marvell.

If the speed limitation isn't a issue, maybe you should look into a port multiplier provided your mobo supports it (if not you'll need a controller that does).

 

[freaksavior]

I would need a controller that did.
I need a decent speed but it just has to be 30+ mbps which pretty much any card will do that.