SATA Controller Recommendation?

[Searcher7]

I picked up a Hitachi Deskstar 160G SATA drive(model
#HDT722516DLA380). So now I'll need to get a controller so I can use
it with a HP 7955 that is complete, but without a hard drive.

Rather than jump right in I though I'd ask if there is anything I
should know or stick to in regard to SATA controllers, or should
basically any one do just fine..

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[Quaoar]

I picked up a Hitachi Deskstar 160G SATA drive(model
#HDT722516DLA380). So now I'll need to get a controller so I can use
it with a HP 7955 that is complete, but without a hard drive.

Rather than jump right in I though I'd ask if there is anything I
should know or stick to in regard to SATA controllers, or should
basically any one do just fine..

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

Promise. Promise has been a good choice for a decade.
www.promise.com

Q

 

[kony]

I picked up a Hitachi Deskstar 160G SATA drive(model
#HDT722516DLA380). So now I'll need to get a controller so I can use
it with a HP 7955 that is complete, but without a hard drive.

Rather than jump right in I though I'd ask if there is anything I
should know or stick to in regard to SATA controllers, or should
basically any one do just fine..

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

The best advice would be to return the drive and get the
PATA version since SATA on PCI is slower than PATA. If you
are running out of PATA controllers then a (non-raid) PCI
controller might best be used for the optical drives which
have lower performance needs.

.... probably not the advice you wanted but there it is.
The system is now aging and not of much value, relatively
speaking, so a higher end SATA card is probably not a good
value. The typical cost effective controller has a Silicon
Image chip on it and a generic card make can tend to be as
well as a higher priced one with a brand cost-overhead.

 

[Todd]

Except for memory, when I buy something for my computer, I am always
planning to get something I can use with the present system and then re-use
in the next system. With memory, they change standards faster than I change
mother boards, so there is hardly ever any possibility of re-use.

Also since all my old video cards are either PCI or AGP, I'll probably have
to get a PCI Express card when I get my next motherboard. Unless by then
they have already moved on to something else.

If I was putting a 160G hard drive in an old system, I would definately get
a SATA drive and PCI/SATA drive adapter, looking forward to the next system.
But that's me. If you are not going to be transferring it to a future
system, you would probably be better off trading it in fot a PATA drive.

Todd

 

[Quaoar]

The best advice would be to return the drive and get the
PATA version since SATA on PCI is slower than PATA. If you
are running out of PATA controllers then a (non-raid) PCI
controller might best be used for the optical drives which
have lower performance needs.

... probably not the advice you wanted but there it is.
The system is now aging and not of much value, relatively
speaking, so a higher end SATA card is probably not a good
value. The typical cost effective controller has a Silicon
Image chip on it and a generic card make can tend to be as
well as a higher priced one with a brand cost-overhead.

Good call!

Q

 

[Searcher7]

You sound like gamers.

This is really about storage. The SATA drive won't be any worse than
the original 40g drive, as far as performance, and I definitly will not
be getting a high end video card for this "old" system so I see no real
gain in performance by using a PATA drive.

As for gaming, I'll probably put MAME on the system, but that is all.
And I guess that eventually I'll have to transfer the drive to a
different system, but I'm not worried about that now.

I picked up the drive for $50 from someone who had it lying around
because he didn't want to go through the trouble of getting a card to
use it.

So any recommendation for a PCI/SATA drive adapter would be
appreciated.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
******************************************************************************************************

 

[kony]

Except for memory, when I buy something for my computer, I am always
planning to get something I can use with the present system and then re-use
in the next system. With memory, they change standards faster than I change
mother boards, so there is hardly ever any possibility of re-use.

Also since all my old video cards are either PCI or AGP, I'll probably have
to get a PCI Express card when I get my next motherboard. Unless by then
they have already moved on to something else.

If I was putting a 160G hard drive in an old system, I would definately get
a SATA drive and PCI/SATA drive adapter, looking forward to the next system.
But that's me. If you are not going to be transferring it to a future
system, you would probably be better off trading it in fot a PATA drive.

Todd

Perhaps, but some new systems have a shortage of PATA
channels so to use the commonly available PATA optical
drives and your other current PATA HDDs, it could even make
sense to buy a PATA PCI controller, instead of an SATA.

Anyway, everybody and their brother sells the generic
Silicon Image based SATA cards, typically under $25.

 

[Searcher7]

Perhaps, but some new systems have a shortage of PATA
channels so to use the commonly available PATA optical
drives and your other current PATA HDDs, it could even make
sense to buy a PATA PCI controller, instead of an SATA.

Anyway, everybody and their brother sells the generic
Silicon Image based SATA cards, typically under $25.

I still need recommendations if anyone knows.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[Frank]

(e-mail address removed)2.com wrote:
|| kony wrote:
||| On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:00:07 GMT, "Todd"
|||
|||| Except for memory, when I buy something for my computer, I am
|||| always planning to get something I can use with the present system
|||| and then re-use in the next system. With memory, they change
|||| standards faster than I change mother boards, so there is hardly
|||| ever any possibility of re-use.
||||
|||| Also since all my old video cards are either PCI or AGP, I'll
|||| probably have to get a PCI Express card when I get my next
|||| motherboard. Unless by then they have already moved on to
|||| something else.
||||
|||| If I was putting a 160G hard drive in an old system, I would
|||| definately get a SATA drive and PCI/SATA drive adapter, looking
|||| forward to the next system. But that's me. If you are not going
|||| to be transferring it to a future system, you would probably be
|||| better off trading it in fot a PATA drive.
||||
|||| Todd
||||
|||
|||
||| Perhaps, but some new systems have a shortage of PATA
||| channels so to use the commonly available PATA optical
||| drives and your other current PATA HDDs, it could even make
||| sense to buy a PATA PCI controller, instead of an SATA.
|||
||| Anyway, everybody and their brother sells the generic
||| Silicon Image based SATA cards, typically under $25.
||
|| I still need recommendations if anyone knows.
||
|| Thanks.
||
|| Darren Harris
|| Staten Island, New York.

<http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010150410+1193212547&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=410>
Promise or Adaptec.

 

[kony]

I still need recommendations if anyone knows.

See above

There is no need for some special thing here, just buy one
from your favorite vendor next time you place an order
online since the shipping cost of a card alone could easily
be 30% as much as the card itself. ie- ~$6 S/H on a $20
card might be a typical online cost.

You might decide if you want any extra features though, like
an eSATA (external) port. It's very handy in some cases but
maybe you don't need it, we can't know this, nor how many
cables you have or still need (some cards may have more than
others). There are also cards with 2 or 4 ports, PATA on
the same card, even USB2 or Firewire on same card but all
these drive up price quite a bit over a basic 2 or 4 port
SATA card. If it ends up costing a lot, frankly you'd be as
well off putting the $ towards a newer system.

Here's one at newegg that stands out for having 2 external
and 4 internal at a low price-point,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816107001

 

[Searcher7]

Reliability is the most important thing.

But can someone tell me the importance of the data transfer rates?
There doesn't seem to be any consistency between manufacturers as far
as how this is defined.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
******************************************************************************************************

 

[kony]

Reliability is the most important thing.

But can someone tell me the importance of the data transfer rates?

This is a pretty open ended question, what's the context?

Obviously if your use requires realtime streaming of the
data for processing (that is faster than the data can be
streamed), it will be a bottleneck. Often this is not much
of an issue, and you didn't mention anything that would make
it one.

There doesn't seem to be any consistency between manufacturers as far
as how this is defined.

manufacturers of drives or controllers or?
To get rates, the best bet is real world testing, or at
least benchmarks sought online.

 

[Searcher7]

This is a pretty open ended question, what's the context?

I don't know. The ads I read mostly say 150Gp/s(150Mp/s). Though I've
seen a couple that mention to 3.0Gp/s.

Obviously if your use requires realtime streaming of the
data for processing (that is faster than the data can be
streamed), it will be a bottleneck. Often this is not much
of an issue, and you didn't mention anything that would make
it one.

Ok. I guess for real time video editing the 3.0Gp/s would be best, but
I'd have to research a lot of hardware, so I'm not sure if a card like
that would still be a bottleneck.

manufacturers of drives or controllers or?
To get rates, the best bet is real world testing, or at
least benchmarks sought online.

My present need is to get the drive working reliably on one port. But
perhaps I should take into consideration the posibilty of doing some on
the fly video editing.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[kony]

I don't know. The ads I read mostly say 150Gp/s(150Mp/s). Though I've
seen a couple that mention to 3.0Gp/s.

Ok, you mean max theoretical bus transfer rates.
They are forward-thinking, in that they have the technology
to do it (make a bus that can), and it wouldn't hurt, but
the drive itself is the bottleneck, not the bus, so the
importance is very low, far less than most other factors.

Ok. I guess for real time video editing the 3.0Gp/s would be best, but
I'd have to research a lot of hardware, so I'm not sure if a card like
that would still be a bottleneck.

No, if you are realtime editing UNCOMPRESSED video, the
drive itself should have the max possible transfer rate...
or at least, fast enough to not bottleneck the editing. If
both the source and destination video streams were
compressed instead of uncompressed, it will hardly matter as
just about any compression (perhaps not some lossless and HD
video) will put the bit rate under the capability of today's
low-end, reasonably sized drives. ie - the
Maxtor/Seagate/WD/etc 7k2 RPM ATA100 or SATA150, 80GB or
higher variants you'd fine anywhere for cheap.

It is the particular details that matter, not the class of
activity. Video editing has as large a variance in data
rate as anything- even moreso.

My present need is to get the drive working reliably on one port. But
perhaps I should take into consideration the posibilty of doing some on
the fly video editing.

Typically the most important things are:

Plenty of space. Largest capacity per (drive) unit the
budget will allow.

Backup storage for it all

Determining the max data rate you would ever need for the
specific jobs and at least matching it. It can help to use
two drives but not RAID, or if RAID, two different arrays-
one for the source and the other for destination in your
editing jobs. Trying simultaneously read and/or write
multiple data streams from the same drive or array should be
avoided if possible. Towards this end it conflicts with
largest drive possible mentioned above- two 300GB drives
would be faster than one 500GB.

 

[Searcher7]

Ok, you mean max theoretical bus transfer rates.
They are forward-thinking, in that they have the technology
to do it (make a bus that can), and it wouldn't hurt, but
the drive itself is the bottleneck, not the bus, so the
importance is very low, far less than most other factors.



No, if you are realtime editing UNCOMPRESSED video, the
drive itself should have the max possible transfer rate...
or at least, fast enough to not bottleneck the editing. If
both the source and destination video streams were
compressed instead of uncompressed, it will hardly matter as
just about any compression (perhaps not some lossless and HD
video) will put the bit rate under the capability of today's
low-end, reasonably sized drives. ie - the
Maxtor/Seagate/WD/etc 7k2 RPM ATA100 or SATA150, 80GB or
higher variants you'd fine anywhere for cheap.

It is the particular details that matter, not the class of
activity. Video editing has as large a variance in data
rate as anything- even moreso.



Typically the most important things are:

Plenty of space. Largest capacity per (drive) unit the
budget will allow.

Backup storage for it all

Determining the max data rate you would ever need for the
specific jobs and at least matching it. It can help to use
two drives but not RAID, or if RAID, two different arrays-
one for the source and the other for destination in your
editing jobs. Trying simultaneously read and/or write
multiple data streams from the same drive or array should be
avoided if possible. Towards this end it conflicts with
largest drive possible mentioned above- two 300GB drives
would be faster than one 500GB.

Thanks a lot for all the info.

So basically, a 1.5(SATA150?) is a faster transfer rate than I'd ever
need with present technology, correct?

I have some 10,000rpm Seagate SCSI drives that I'll probably use in
another system for my video editing experiments, but from what you are
telling me it is best to have a source drive(or array) for each stream,
along with a destination drive.(I won't be saving the eidting changes
permanently, so the destination drive will not have to be that big).

Nevertheless, if I go with a single drive for basic uses, I assume that
like you mentioned just about any SATA controller would suffice.(ie:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8829680592).

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[kony]

So basically, a 1.5(SATA150?) is a faster transfer rate than I'd ever
need with present technology, correct?

Yes

There are some isolated tests that will show SATA150 a very
few % faster in certain situations, but not in the types of
large file, continuous transfers used in typical video
editing... and this would be comparing apples to apples,
equivalent drives. If you had the opposite need, low
latency but not very large files, a WD Raptor in SATA form
would be a pronounced performance increase.

I have some 10,000rpm Seagate SCSI drives that I'll probably use in
another system for my video editing experiments, but from what you are
telling me it is best to have a source drive(or array) for each stream,
along with a destination drive.(I won't be saving the eidting changes
permanently, so the destination drive will not have to be that big).

Yes. This is still presuming fairly high data rates. If
your source were compressed, and the edited video being
recompressed on the fly, it would be far less necessary as
the compression and other effects themselves tend to be more
of a bottleneck than the drive I/O speed. Similar could be
said about audio, if you were mixing two audio tracks it is
conceivable a single drive "could" supply both as they are a
signficantly lower data rate than the corresponding video
(which should be on another volume/array (or drive) ).

Nevertheless, if I go with a single drive for basic uses, I assume that
like you mentioned just about any SATA controller would suffice.(ie:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8829680592).

Yes, except that you'll be running it off the PCI bus
making it slower than any other alternative. The ideal
controller will be chipset integral or at least have it's
own processor and memory cache to offset some of the penalty
of it running on PCI bus. Again it matters most with
uncompressed data streams but it is the resultant rate that
really matters, if you were trying to mix 4 compressed audio
tracks it will start looking like a higher data rate then,
but with the higher CPU overhead of decompressing them all,
you'll have a lot of variables and actual testing will best
pinpoint bottlenecks.

 

[Searcher7]

Yes

There are some isolated tests that will show SATA150 a very
few % faster in certain situations, but not in the types of
large file, continuous transfers used in typical video
editing... and this would be comparing apples to apples,
equivalent drives. If you had the opposite need, low
latency but not very large files, a WD Raptor in SATA form
would be a pronounced performance increase.




Yes. This is still presuming fairly high data rates. If
your source were compressed, and the edited video being
recompressed on the fly, it would be far less necessary as
the compression and other effects themselves tend to be more
of a bottleneck than the drive I/O speed. Similar could be
said about audio, if you were mixing two audio tracks it is
conceivable a single drive "could" supply both as they are a
signficantly lower data rate than the corresponding video
(which should be on another volume/array (or drive) ).



Yes, except that you'll be running it off the PCI bus
making it slower than any other alternative. The ideal
controller will be chipset integral or at least have it's
own processor and memory cache to offset some of the penalty
of it running on PCI bus. Again it matters most with
uncompressed data streams but it is the resultant rate that
really matters, if you were trying to mix 4 compressed audio
tracks it will start looking like a higher data rate then,
but with the higher CPU overhead of decompressing them all,
you'll have a lot of variables and actual testing will best
pinpoint bottlenecks.

The big project will involve a single full screen uncompressed and
possibly high definition video which will also incorporate brightness
and color changes(which will last no more than a second).And further
editing will basically involve placing small windows of standard
definition videos on top of this in different locations, moving in
different directions.(As many as three windows at one time). Some
briefly increasing in size from a pin point to a full screen video(over
about 6 seconds).

The effect basically being a video montage.

But I guess there is a better forum for discussing the best hardware
for these things.(Probably not SATA).

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[Searcher7]

Ok. I have those SATA
adaptors(http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8829680592),
but don't know if I can use them: I still have to figure out if I
really need to or should get an enclosre for the SATA drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Darren

 

[kony]

Ok. I have those SATA
adaptors(http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8829680592),
but don't know if I can use them: I still have to figure out if I
really need to or should get an enclosre for the SATA drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Darren

I don't know, does it have a stadard SATA plug on the cable
or something proprietary that mates with their
(proprietary?) enclosure?

If it is standard, *some* kind of enclosure would still be
good to protect the drive a little from the environment.

 

[Searcher7]

I don't know, does it have a stadard SATA plug on the cable
or something proprietary that mates with their
(proprietary?) enclosure?

If it is standard, *some* kind of enclosure would still be
good to protect the drive a little from the environment.

Actually I saw this also:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=002&item=120000304028

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.