I hope to purchase one of the LIME products in the near future.  I'm curious if there will be much of a price difference between the IDE setup and the SATA?  When buying hard drives these days they are very comparable.  Thanks, Randy

 

thanks for all the viewers I guess. 

I believe Tom talked about this ome on the AVS Forum thread. As you noted prices are pretty comparable on drives. I believe he stated that prices wouldn't change much if at all for SATA and that existing users would get the SATA code at no charge. Do note that SATA, at this time, does *not* allow for drive spindown. That makes a BIG power consumption difference! SATA cabling is neater and has better airflow but there's not going to be any added performance from going SATA it seems. At this time I see no reason to go SATA really although if it would allow me to go more than 12 drives I might try it

Until we can spin SATA drives down/up, and be able to read their temperatures (as well as other S.M.A.R.T. data), we don't think we can ship a SATA product.  This is, however, actively being worked on and a solution is in sight.  But starting with release 2.060324, you can "roll your own" SATA system, though with above stated limitations.

 

Regarding costs - SATA drives are approaching the cost of equivalent PATA drives; and, in some cases, even less expensive.  The drive trays and controller cards however, are not less expensive, so the final cost of a SATA system will be somewhat higher.

Tom, I know that right now we're limited to 12 drives. Is there any chance we might be able to add still more drives to a single box using the onboard SATA controller? I'm about to max my box out and was just wondering if that might be possible - wretched excess and all that 

Tom, I currently have a ReadyNAS system that is full and I'm looking at possibly switching to your system. 

 

Since you will most likely have SATA support in the future, is it be possible to mix controllers and drives? 

 

For example, if I start with a system with a PATA card and drives and transfer my data from my ReadyNAS.  Could I later install a SATA card and reuse the SATA drives from my ReadyNAS or should I just wait for the full SATA solution?

 

I believe with the beta release 2.060324 you can have mixed drive.  I know it supports sata but couldn't find anything on mixed drives.