Desmond said:
Hi can anyone tell me if tis is achevable.
I have an Asus motherboard that is SATA1. I need a bigger hard disk
500G pref. Problem is these are SATA2. Can I plug a SATA2 PCI card
into the computer and get around the problem this way. I only have 2
SATA connections on my motherboard anyway. Could do with more.
TIA
Desmond.
Consider the limitations. PCI is 133MB/sec for the desktop
bus version. Practical transfer rates are perhaps 120MB/sec
or so.
Disks have two transfer rates to consider. The burst rate
and the sustained rate. The burst rate happens, when data
is moved between the host and the cache ram chip on the
disk controller. The sustained rate happens, when there
is a long enough transfer, that the cache chip cannot hold
it all, so the transfer rate to the platter, dominates
the level of performance.
Your new SATA2 disk may burst at 250MB/sec, but sustained
could be 70-120MB/sec. The motherboard SATA1 connector
can meet the sustained transfer rate requirement. The
PCI bus prevents a SATA2 card, if such a thing existed,
from doing any better.
Things you can try -
1) Plug the new disk into your motherboard SATA1 connector.
You'll be able to handle sustained transfers OK.
2) If the motherboard has a VIA chipset, then install the
"Force 150" jumper on the hard drive. As far as I know, only
Hitachi doesn't have such a jumper on their drive.
(The Hitachi Feature Tool can be used to configure the
drive, and force it to 150MB/sec.) You can check the
manufacturer's site, for more info on jumper settings.
Seagate probably has the jumper on the back of the drive.
3) If the motherboard has a PCI Express x1 or larger connector,
you can install a PCI Express SATA2 controller card. For
example, a card with a SIL3132 connects to the PCI Express
bus. I'm not sure there are any PCI cards with SATA2 on
them - they're more likely to be SATA1 cards.
HTH,
Paul
