Need good 2-port PCI Sata card

[jason4207]

I have the CM Centurion 590 and am using the included 4-in-3 and a couple 3-in-3's that I had leftover from some Antec900 builds and am full w/ 10 drives. I'm going to move to all 4-in-3's so i can move to 12 and so I need 2 more Sata ports.

 

I'm using all 8 SataII ports off my mobo, and then I have a x1 PCIe 2-port SataII card in the lone x1 PCIe slot on my mobo.  I want to add 2 more drives.  I figure 2 drives running on the PCI bus won't be too bad since nothing else is really on it.  133MB/s bandwidth seems adequate for 2 drives.  My only other option is to get a 4-port x1 PCIe SataII card, but that's going to be a bit more expensive.

 

I found this card:

 

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=959&seq=1&format=2

 

It's only SataI, but I figured it wouldn't make much difference.

 

Any suggestions?

[terrastrife]

do you have 2 pci slots? if so, buy two. sil based cards are pretty slow, one card will probably peak around 45-65MB/sec epending on the qualiy of the card, so buy two to speed things up. you will also probably want a windows based pc to plug them into to flash to latest hdd size support (you can flash these cards from the device manager).

 

or get a secondhand promise tx4.

[jason4207]

I have 3 PCI slots available. 

 

So, 2 of these cheap PCI cards or...

 

Which promise should I look for?  I see a SataI and a SataII version.

[xamindar]

I'm looking for a sata pci card as well for my mini itx build. I need 4 ports though. Would it be worth it getting a sata II 4 port card or is a sata 1 card enough because of the slow pci bus? terrastrife sense you mentioned a tx4 card, are they the best? I found this promise tx4 sata I card which is affordable. Or am I better off getting the sata II version of this card? Also, are these cards bootable? Can one of the hard drives be set as the boot device? My current 2 port card will not boot when the bios is set to boot off board cards first.

[WeeboTech]

The later revs of the promise tx4 support 4 sata II drives and can also support 66mhz bus if your motherboard supports it. (266mb/s vs 133mb/s) Check your motherboard specs for pci 2.1 or higher.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

[xamindar]

The later revs of the promise tx4 support 4 sata II drives and can also support 66mhz bus if your motherboard supports it. (266mb/s vs 133mb/s) Check your motherboard specs for pci 2.1 or higher.

Here is an lspci of my current card that I want to replace with a 4 port one. Does that mean this card supports 66mhz? Now I just have to go check my bios to see if it does as well. Can't find anything about it in the manual for this motherboard (NC92).

02:01.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20371 (FastTrak S150 TX2plus) (rev 02)
       Subsystem: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20371 (FastTrak S150 TX2plus)
       Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 96, IRQ 16
       I/O ports at ef00 [size=64]
       I/O ports at ee00 [size=16]
       I/O ports at ed00 [size=128]
       Memory at fdcff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
       Memory at fdcc0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
       Expansion ROM at fdb00000 [disabled] [size=64K]
       Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
       Kernel driver in use: sata_promise
       Kernel modules: sata_promise

 

EDIT: I don't think it supports 66mhz. I set the bios to "autodetect PCI Clock" and it keeps it set at 33mhz.

 

EDIT2: Maybe this would be a better option for my board. Just found it, 4 sata ports on the riser card. Might have to compile a kernel module though. Don't know if this would be faster than a pci card or not though.

 

[jason4207]

I've got the MSI P43 Neo3-F.  On MSI's website I see:

 

• Four 32-bit v2.3 master PCI bus slots.

- Support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface.

 

So, it looks like I'm in good shape to use a PCI card to add 2 more drives w/o any bottleneck, correct?

 

What do I need to look for to ensure I get the Promise TX4 that supports the 266MB/s interface?

[WeeboTech]

It looks as though the TX2 supports 66mhz.

Do you have any other pci cards installed? that may cause a drop back.

 

I would assume any recent purchase of a TX4 will be a 66mhz 3.3v card.

 

if you only need 2 more drives, what about a silicon image based x1 card? they can be very cost effective!

[WeeboTech]

EDIT2: Maybe this would be a better option for my board. Just found it, 4 sata ports on the riser card. Might have to compile a kernel module though. Don't know if this would be faster than a pci card or not though.

 

That daughter board is only for jetway m-itx boards with a special daughter board connector.

go with pci or pci-e

[jason4207]

I would assume any recent purchase of a TX4 will be a 66mhz 3.3v card.

 

if you only need 2 more drives, what about a silicon image based x1 card? they can be very cost effective!

 

I already have a 2-port silicon image x1 PCIe card in the only x1 PCIe port that my mobo has.  I still have the x16 PCIe slot open, but I don't think anything besides a graphics card will work in there.

 

So, I want 2 more ports, but I don't have any usable PCIe slots available.

 

I have 4 PCI slots and one of them is occupied by a cheap graphics card.  The only other options I see are a port multiplier off one of the ICH10R ports or some kind of IDE-Sata adapter off of the IDE header.

 

I'm looking for the cheapest option that won't give me any bottleneck. 

[WeeboTech]

I would assume any recent purchase of a TX4 will be a 66mhz 3.3v card.

 

if you only need 2 more drives, what about a silicon image based x1 card? they can be very cost effective!

 

I already have a 2-port silicon image x1 PCIe card in the only x1 PCIe port that my mobo has.  I still have the x16 PCIe slot open, but I don't think anything besides a graphics card will work in there.

 

So, I want 2 more ports, but I don't have any usable PCIe slots available.

 

I have 4 PCI slots and one of them is occupied by a cheap graphics card.  The only other options I see are a port multiplier off one of the ICH10R ports or some kind of IDE-Sata adapter off of the IDE header.

 

I'm looking for the cheapest option that won't give me any bottleneck. 

 

Try moving the pcie x1 card to the x16 slot and see if it works, if it does then you have a high speed option.

If it works you can get another x1 card or the rosewill PCIe x4 4 port sata card which would cost the same as a TX4.

 

If it does not work you can go with an el cheapo pcie video card. (I bought mine for 9.99 on ebay)

I don't know if your pci video card is slowing down the bus.

If you have a pcie video card you could borrow from another machine that may reveal why the pci bus is dropping to 33 mhz.

 

i would not go with port multipliers when you have other "slot" options available.

[jason4207]

 

 

Try moving the pcie x1 card to the x16 slot and see if it works, if it does then you have a high speed option.

If it works you can get another x1 card or the rosewill PCIe x4 4 port sata card which would cost the same as a TX4.

 

If it does not work you can go with an el cheapo pcie video card. (I bought mine for 9.99 on ebay)

I don't know if your pci video card is slowing down the bus.

If you have a pcie video card you could borrow from another machine that may reveal why the pci bus is dropping to 33 mhz.

 

i would not go with port multipliers when you have other "slot" options available.

 

Well, when I first installed the x1 card I was having issues getting it to show up.  I tried the x16 slot and then I couldn't even POST.  It turns out that if I lock the card down using the tool-less case design it won't work, but if I just let it sit in the slot w/o the lock or screw it's fine.  The lock forces it in there at a funny angle for some reason.  Anyway, I think the x16 won't work due to it not POSTing before, but I will give it another try w/o the lock and see what happens.  It makes sense that a card not properly seated in the main PCIe slot could cause the PC to not POST.

 

That wasn't me that was having PCI 33MHz issues (it was xamindar), but I am worried that my PCI graphics card may set the bus to 33MHz based on his problem.

 

Thanks for all your help so far WeeboTech!

[Rajahal]

I'm going to parrot the Promise TX4 (SATA II version).  I'm using one, and it has been rock solid.  While it is slower than a PCI-e alternative, I haven't really noticed the slowdown.  Even when I had it populated with 4 SATA II drives, my parity checks would complete in under 8 hours.

[xamindar]

EDIT2: Maybe this would be a better option for my board. Just found it, 4 sata ports on the riser card. Might have to compile a kernel module though. Don't know if this would be faster than a pci card or not though.

 

That daughter board is only for jetway m-itx boards with a special daughter board connector.

go with pci or pci-e

That's what I have, a Jetway mini itx board. So if I got this card it would leave the one pci slot free for something else. Though it doesn't really matter. Also, regarding the card not running at 66mhz, it is the only card inserted so it must just be the motherboard not supporting 33mhz I guess.

[jason4207]

I can get a Promise Sata150 TX4 PCI for cheap, and from the specs I've read online it's also capable of 66MHz PCI.  Will I notice any slowdown vs. the Sata300 version?  I'll only be running 2 drives off of it and that will also be the only 2 drives on the PCI bus.

[xamindar]

I can get a Promise Sata150 TX4 PCI for cheap, and from the specs I've read online it's also capable of 66MHz PCI.  Will I notice any slowdown vs. the Sata300 version?  I'll only be running 2 drives off of it and that will also be the only 2 drives on the PCI bus.

I decided to just get the Promise sata150 tx4 as it seems the best supported. Got it on ebay for $20. I can tell you with my current card (tx2 2 port sata150 pci card) my parity checks start out around 40,000 KB/sec. This is with two data drives on the sata card and the parity on the motherboard slot. Pretty sure my card is only running at 33mhz though so it might be faster if it was 66mhz.

[jason4207]

 

I decided to just get the Promise sata150 tx4 as it seems the best supported. Got it on ebay for $20. I can tell you with my current card (tx2 2 port sata150 pci card) my parity checks start out around 40,000 KB/sec. This is with two data drives on the sata card and the parity on the motherboard slot. Pretty sure my card is only running at 33mhz though so it might be faster if it was 66mhz.

 

Do you know what kind of speeds you were getting before using the card?  Right now I'm using all 8 ports on my mobo, and a 2-port PCIe x1 sataII card and am getting 55-58,000KB/s on parity checks.  I don't really want to go down to 40,000KB/s if I can avoid it.