1TB hard drive on PATA machine

[Peter Chant]

Any thoughts?

Existing system is PATA only, PCI & AGP, no PCI-E.

PATA drives seem rare and relatively expensive for the amount of storage you
get and at maximum seem to be 500GB. If I want to upgrade this machine to
1TB the only feasible way looks like external firewire drive plus firewire
card. Perhaps my existing old firewire card will suffice.

Alternative would be to upgrade mobo, CPU, memory and graphics - don't
really want to do that quite yet.

Any thoughts?

Pete

 

[Jon Danniken]

Any thoughts?

Existing system is PATA only, PCI & AGP, no PCI-E.

PATA drives seem rare and relatively expensive for the amount of storage
you
get and at maximum seem to be 500GB. If I want to upgrade this machine to
1TB the only feasible way looks like external firewire drive plus firewire
card. Perhaps my existing old firewire card will suffice.

Alternative would be to upgrade mobo, CPU, memory and graphics - don't
really want to do that quite yet.

Any thoughts?

Buy two 500GB IDE drives. Or three 320GB IDE drives. Or buy a SATA card
and use those drives.

Jon

 

[Peter Chant]

Buy two 500GB IDE drives. Or three 320GB IDE drives. Or buy a SATA card
and use those drives.

I've looked at a couple of large suppliers and they don't seem to stock PCI
SATA cards anymore. 500GB PATA disks are within £10 of 1TB SATAs.
However, you've triggered a thought. Buy 1TB external to replace existing
2nd backup drive and put that (PATA) disk in the PC.

A useful thought. Thanks.

Pete

 

[1D10T]

A useful thought. Thanks.

Check this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132021

I'm using it in 4 comps to connect my Rosewill external eSATA enclosures:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joearnold/3418463100/sizes/l/

 

[1D10T]

A useful thought. Thanks.

This one also adds an internal SATA port, but only one external eSATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124013

 

[Gerard Bok]

Existing system is PATA only, PCI & AGP, no PCI-E.

PATA drives seem rare and relatively expensive for the amount of storage you
get and at maximum seem to be 500GB. If I want to upgrade this machine to
1TB the only feasible way looks like external firewire drive plus firewire
card. Perhaps my existing old firewire card will suffice.

Alternative would be to upgrade mobo, CPU, memory and graphics - don't
really want to do that quite yet.

Any thoughts?

First of all: what are your objectives ?
Add 1 TB to an existing system ?
In that case: buy an external drive.

Adding internal SATA drives to a system that doesn't support SATA
is hardly an upgrade. 80 MB/s+ is a reasonable speed for modern
drives. Don't expect any bridged drive to run faster than some
30 MB/s. (I don't mean testbed speed but real speed in a system
like yours, the PATA, PCI & AGP only class PCs)

 

[1D10T]

Adding internal SATA drives to a system that doesn't support SATA
is hardly an upgrade. 80 MB/s+ is a reasonable speed for modern
drives. Don't expect any bridged drive to run faster than some
30 MB/s. (I don't mean testbed speed but real speed in a system
like yours, the PATA, PCI & AGP only class PCs)

BUT - He *will* have SATA/eSATA, and will still have the drives and
enclosures whenever he upgrades his system.

 

[Peter Chant]

This one also adds an internal SATA port, but only one external eSATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124013

Thanks.

UK wise a useful card comes up on amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000UDUB...3UHEPWUM&tag=kelkmpcpc-2nd-ce-21&linkCode=asn

Bit pricey at £24.28 if the pound had not crashed nearly four times dearer
than the ones you suggest. :-(

Don't suppose there is anything to stop me looping a cable from the eSATA
port back into the machine - apart from ugliness.

 

[Peter Chant]

First of all: what are your objectives ?
Add 1 TB to an existing system ?
In that case: buy an external drive.

Just bought a digital SLR. Had it just over a week. Only really seriously
used it for three days last weekend. Already have 5GB of new photos, after
deleting bad photos. Photo newsgroup advice, save raw, buy lots of disks!

Though I use this machine most I do have a faster XP machine for editing if
need be, but I store data on linux box.

Adding internal SATA drives to a system that doesn't support SATA
is hardly an upgrade. 80 MB/s+ is a reasonable speed for modern
drives. Don't expect any bridged drive to run faster than some
30 MB/s. (I don't mean testbed speed but real speed in a system
like yours, the PATA, PCI & AGP only class PCs)

That would be an improvement!

 

[Gerard Bok]

Just bought a digital SLR. Had it just over a week. Only really seriously
used it for three days last weekend. Already have 5GB of new photos, after
deleting bad photos. Photo newsgroup advice, save raw, buy lots of disks!

Yes. And the plural form of 'disks was probably intentional

External disk tend to have relatively high failing rates.
Given their pricetags nowadays you should secure the pictures on
more than one drive.
And it is wise to select one with a minimum of 2 years warranty.

 

[1D10T]

Don't suppose there is anything to stop me looping a cable from the eSATA
port back into the machine - apart from ugliness.

You can with an eSATA to SATA adapter cable.

 

[Peter Chant]

Yes. And the plural form of 'disks was probably intentional

Daily backup to an external drive connected to a Linksys NSLU2.

Approx monthly backup to a second external drive.

External disk tend to have relatively high failing rates.
Given their pricetags nowadays you should secure the pictures on
more than one drive.
And it is wise to select one with a minimum of 2 years warranty.

Imagine my annoyance just before christmas when external hard drive and
system drive (have two in this PC) failed within a week of each other.
Luckily for the external drive it was the PSU.

Pete

 

[Peter Chant]

Extra Value Serial ATA 2 Port PCI Card £12.99 inc vat
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/48670/show_product_overview

Thank you.

 

[Peter Chant]

4) Decide this is the right time to move on, to upgrade to
a native SATA capable motherboard, CPU and memory.

#4 holds the most promise for overall performance if that is
a primary concern. On the other hand, a PCI SATA controller
card is the least work to add an additional drive if it's
not running the OS so it needs not be reconfigured or
reinstalled to look to the SATA controller for the OS boot
volume.

PC will need to be upgraded in the next year, performance is _sometimes_ a
bit of an issue. However, don't want to be force to upgrade just because
I've made another purchase.

Would perhaps would be keener if this motherboard were more suitable for a
media PC but alas the on board sound is poor and the media PC case I have
will only take two cards - ie graphics and TV (frame grabber) or audio.

Pete

 

[Peter Chant]

Update in case anyone is interested. A little odd, originally worryingly
flakey but now seems OK.

1TB Samsung disk,
PCI SATA adapter VIA6421A based.
State of the Ark KT400 based motherboard.
Linux, kernel 2.6.27.7


No issue with linux seeing the controller, already had it compiled in the
kernel.

No problem finding disk.

Partitioned disk no problems.

Formatting disk, problematic, repeated errors on SATA interface forcing
reboot.

Downloaded Samsung untility to set drive from SATA 300 to SATA 150 to match
card. A pain, XP box would not play ball creating boot floppy nor boot
disk (maybe issue with XP box). Did not work under qemu / dosemu on linux
box (long shot).

- Solution, download freedos image and copy to floppy,
copy Samsung tools onto freedos disk. Worked well. Set drive to 150.

SATA interface errors persisted. Disabled IDE controllers on mobo and
various other unused onboard peripherals to reduce chances of conflicts,
especially IRQ's. Still flakey. Does not seem to be power as no
difference in reliability between having three hard drives (2 old 1 new)
and just the new drive.

Formatted disk after some persistence.

Copied across 290GB of data with no problems. Mounted new disk in place of
old one.

Running with new disk now to see how it pans out.

+++

This is all a bit odd. Formatting was very flakey but now everything seems
rock solid. I am sure the copying would have been a good "burn in" test if
there were any persistant problems.

 

[Peter Chant]

kony wrote:

Run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic to check the drive.

Yes. It gives errors on "Scan MC" and surface scan, all are reported
as "ecc errors". Supplier sent me a courtest email today to see if all was
well so I replied accordingly.

If I were guessing, I'd guess you had a bad SATA connector,
contact problem and being in the case to unplug and replug
drives had shifted the wires just enough that the connectors
are making better connection now.

Tried running the diagnostic in a second newer machine, one with a SATA
interface on the motherboard rather than a PCI interface. Same problems on
the diagnostic. It must be the drive.

A bit of web searching, there does appear to be an issue, but it might be
the drives, it might be the diagnositic utility. However, that does not
account for the hangs whilst attempting to format. Not confidence
inspiring.

Pete