sata to pata adapters on p4c800

[John Smith]

well I have a pc-dl asus ( basically a dual p4c800 , I figured I would get
more replies this way)
and I am running raid off the pata promise ( single channel) and the
performance is supposed to be better if I go off the promise sata or one
sata and one pata . However I don;t want to buy new drives is worth getting
one of those adapter things , I haven't found anything specs on the web and
no comparision of these adapters saying which is best.
I do a little video editing and occasionally I am pushing the drive, so
would it be worth it to get more performance
right now the drives are maxing out at 133 Mhz ( weird how it is that exact)
when I do a par repair

any recomendations

 

[Paul]

well I have a pc-dl asus ( basically a dual p4c800 , I figured I would get
more replies this way)
and I am running raid off the pata promise ( single channel) and the
performance is supposed to be better if I go off the promise sata or one
sata and one pata . However I don;t want to buy new drives is worth getting
one of those adapter things , I haven't found anything specs on the web and
no comparision of these adapters saying which is best.
I do a little video editing and occasionally I am pushing the drive, so
would it be worth it to get more performance
right now the drives are maxing out at 133 Mhz ( weird how it is that exact)
when I do a par repair

any recomendations

ABIT SERILLEL2 IDE to Serial ATA 150 Adapter Kit (SIL3611 based)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813999402
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/FeedBack/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813999402

Rockethead 100 (chip type unknown)
http://secure.newegg.com/app/CustratingReview.asp?item=22-999-111

(Mentions SIL3611 and Marvell 88SA8040 )
http://www.ioisata.com/products/prodcategory.asp?ProdCategoryID=1001

User compatibility report (May 2003, so old news)
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19476

The main problem I have with the information out there, on
PATA disk to SATA host adapters, is the info tends to be
older (from 2003). If you buy an adapter, you'll never really
know whether it will be trouble free or not.

Options:

1) Stick with the current two-drives-on-same-cable Promise 20378
2) Install PATA2SATA adapter on one PATA drive, to spread the I/O.
Adapter adds length to drive, SATA cables are not the most
secure thing in the world.
3) Unplug one PATA drive and keep as a spare for a rainy day.
Buy a SATA drive and use it as part of your RAID array.
Mechanically a bit better, but still the SATA cable issue.
4) Buy a PCI card RAID controller with two IDE cables.
While there are super-cheap cards, they may disappoint in
the performance department.

Have you evaluated the video editing performance ? Are there
dropped frames or stuttering ? How much bandwidth does video
editing require ?

In many situations, you are being limited by seek performance
on a disk, rather than its STR. STR matters when copying large
files, but if you were video editing, I presume the heads are
reading from one part of the disk, and then writing to another ?
It could be, after sweating all these details, that your
application won't make good use of the hardware you've set up.

Paul

 

[John Smith]

well thank you for the long detailed reply. Yeah I found a bunch of those
adapters and found the same frustaration you did.
In looking for a review.alll seem pretty old and no one did a round up of
them comparing them.

my raids are simple strips I am looking for through put. I have two disks
on one pata promise controller and set up a second pair of disks on the on
system board ide controller using windows xp pro.( you can set up a stripe
volume you just can't boot from it.) and I use one raid as source and one
raid as destination. thus limiting the seek times.

no I am not dropping frames ,a single ata 66 Mhz drive should be able to do
it without dropping frames. I haven't dropped frames in years
what I want is when I resize and filter for it to take less time. the
processors are not bottleneck ( hell dual Xeons is over kill)
but the disks are flat out in data transfer, regardles they will be the
limiting factor.


Also one of the option you didn't mention was setting up two pata2sata
adapters off the serial chanel, those are seperate channels on the raid
right?
more elagant solution, more expensive of course
Also part of me just wants blow it all off. and just say live with it till
you need to replace a disk , then buy 2 sata.
I saw and add for a 300 gig for less than $100 after rebate last week,2
adapters are going to run me $50 are my 4-160 Gigs worth saving?
they have served me well but it may be time to move on.

 

[ñíñjà¤têç]

I own 2 "RocketHead 100's" pata to sata adapters (connect pata hdd to
sata channels...). Although they work fine in single drive
configurations, I am not able to set-up a raid0 array with these
adapters. Have not tried raid1 with them, as it's not required for my
setup. Using maxtor ata 133's and my throughput is up only slightly at
best compared to the ide channel. Needless to say, the adapters sit in
my collection of interseting, yet fairly unused devices box...
FYI

ñíñjà¤têç

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[John Smith]

interesting... so even though they were teh same drive , you were unable to
raid them because of the adpaters?
or did you try to raid them?

 

[ñíñjà¤têç]

Identical *new* maxtor 30gb FD ide drives, I ended up setting them up
as raid0 with the onboard promise controler, which only has one
channel, so performance wasn't stellar...But there was no way the
intel ICH5 sata raid controler would set up raid0 with the RocketHead
adapters...

Having said that, I have since removed the drives off the promise
controler and back onto the ICH5 sata ports with the RocketHead
adapters as independant drives, which they operate just fine in
ide/ata mode5.

ñíñjà¤têç

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