KenK said:
I have a T2984 eMachine with XP Home. It has IDE drives. I have three used,
much larger SATA drives and am thinking of installing a SATA controller (do
they exist? Cyberguys 2020126 or 2040853?) and changing to all SATA drives,
including the boot drive. Possible? Practical?
TIA
"PCI SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10, SYBA, SD-SATA2-4IR"
http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=24858
http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=529
SIL3124
I'm just listing the PCI options from this page. While it
is possible to use a PCI Express x1 chip plus a PCI to
PCI Express bridge chip, the company making those has likely
stopped (it made them more expensive).
http://www.siliconimage.com/solutions/pc/host-controller/
SIL3112, SIL3512 PCI to SATA 150MB/sec, 2 port
BIOS chip bug in early onboard BIOS, limited
disks to less than 1TB. Should be fixed.
Supports RAID or regular, via onboard BIOS chip
flash update. Siliconimage has files for it,
but it's better if the card manufacturer provides
them. Most cards come with the correct flash
chip on board (perhaps PMC brand).
SIL3114 PCI to SATA 150MB/sec, 4 port
Like two SIL3112 in the same package.
Same upgrade options. BIOS chip bug may have been
noticed, before SIL3114 release.
SIL3124 PCI to SATA 300MB/sec, 4 ports
PCI-X 64-bit host bus support (but cards can still be
built for 33MHz 32 bit).
Not sure about BIOS chip flashing options.
It looks flash-able, just not sure what files are
available for it. You could run in JBOD for example,
if connecting single drives to a RAID card.
On a SIL3112, at one time the RAID BIOS may have insisted on
two drives being connected. And to stop that, you'd load the
non-RAID BIOS into the flash chip, and you could run with one
drive. There's probably lots of threads around discussing SIL3112
or it's later identical brother SIL3512.
So if you use the Cyberguys card, you would:
1) Shut down computer. Remove all power.
2) Connect new PCI card. Since the card has two slots cut...
http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=24858
it's universal, and will work in either 3.3V or 5V PCI.
3) *Do not* connect any drives to it yet.
4) Start the computer. Install drivers. Cards like this, may
create two entries. A pseudo-SCSI entry, and a proper driver
entry. With this driver in place, *now* the computer knows how
to read any drive on that port.
5) You can connect your SATA drive to the card now. Use your
cloning software or partition management software, to copy
the old IDE drive to the SATA drive.
6) Shut down. Enter the BIOS. The SIL3124 should have a boot-time
code module.
7) Without doing anything, a drive should be recognized as JBOD.
Meaning, it has no RAID metadata on the end of the disk.
If this were not the case, you'd press control-S early in
BIOS POST, and visit the RAID setup screen, to see how
the new SATA single disk is being handled. The SIL3124 BIOS code,
intercepts the control-S and a RAID screen appears.
Disks can either be arranged in RAID arrays, or as ordinary,
single disk JBOD. This would afford an opportunity to verify
the setup (as JBOD or, as nothing special mentioned on the
screen).
(Control-S mentioned in a sample manual. Alternate key is F4.)
http://www.syba.com/upload/1242412351/124241235153190.jpg
8) Your BIOS needs to have a boot option, to actually boot from
the new card. The card "registers" itself to the BIOS, during
POST. In the BIOS "boot order" screens, you're looking for a
special entry for that card (i.e. something you might not have
expected). The single disk used to boot off the SIL3124, might
not be listed as such in the regular list of disks. And you may
have to visit the control-S thing and "designate" one drive or
array as the boot device. So a typical setup might involve
two stages of setup:
regular BIOS - "Boot from" [Other] <--- to get to the SIL3124
But regular BIOS cannot select a drive...
control-S part - select one of your three drives
8a) When cloning drives, *do not* allow the original disk, to be
connected during the first boot of the new clone. The clone must
boot by itself. Once the clone has booted one time on its own,
then it is safe to re-connect the IDE if you want. That means,
once you're ready to do step 8, you should disconnect the IDE.
Do at least one boot from the new SATA. Shut down and connect
up the IDE again (if you wish). Once the clone has been booted
at least once on its own, it won't get confused about it being
the "real C:". I suppose I could put this step in front of (8),
but its too late now.
There's really nothing to fear, as long as you still have the original
IDE disk. The original IDE disk should not get confused. You can
even set the boot order back to the IDE if you want.
As part of your "consumer research", you want to verify your
current BIOS screens, have sufficient control over boot order.
If your computer was as brain-dead as my laptop, you might have
second thoughts about adding devices to it. I don't expect
I'll be able to see screen shots of T2984 eMachine BIOS screens.
*******
The Cyberguys 2040853 is PCI Express x1. That's a different
standard than PCI bus. You check your hardware details (slot mix),
to see if such a slot is present.
http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=49918&core_cross=SEARCH_SKU
Take the side off the PC, and see if the motherboard looks like
this one. This is an "all PCI" motherboard, no PCI Express x1 slots.
Generally, if a computer has PCI Express x1 slots, there's a good
chance it already has SATA ports. That's why I didn't even look
for a picture of your motherboard, before writing the previous
article. I just expected at least one PCI to be present.
http://supcontent.gateway.com/support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Intel2/2519274/251927402.jpg
That board has only PCI slots, and so the first card you mentioned
would work in it. So now I don't need to write a procedure or
issue warnings for 2040853
Also, the motherboard has three PCI slots. If you were
silly, you might have added three cards already, and all
the slots are full, and then, there's no place to put a
card. At least do a slot check first, before buying anything.
I used to run computers, with all slots full, but that sort
of thing really isn't necessary any more. I had one PC,
that had six PCI cards loaded in it (chock full). Now, my
modern machines are 1/3rd to 1/2 full. (Video, TV tuner to
input set top box signal, maybe a sound card.)
You can certainly have fun with your machine. That's the nice
thing about computers "where the side comes off". You can
try stuff. Both side panels on my computer are missing. It's
entirely open, 24/7.
As long as you have a backup, have taken precautions to turn
off the power when plugging in stuff, and make sure any new
cards are fully seated, what could go wrong ?
*******
In the above, I list the part number as SIL3112. This is the
popular spelling. You might also see it referred to as SiI3112.
I'm using SILxxxx in the hope you can be more successful when
Googling it. I don't know how many articles will spell it the
other way.
Have fun,
Paul
