teajunkie

At the moment i have 2x 120gb maxtor ide drives 1x internal as slave drive and 2nd as external in usb 2.0 enclosure. (plus oem 80gb)

They are both full and i need a couple more new ones
Looking at 2x 400gb sata's on scan.co.uk
Should i go down the sata route??
And what would i need???

Never played with any sata stuff so im assuming all i will need is a raid contoller card and two sata drives??
Will this allow me to add the extra new drives whilst leaving the old drives in place?

Cheers and sorry for sounding dumb

cottonfoo

You don't specifically need a RAID controller unless you want to put them in a RAID configuration, any SATA controller will do what you want, although most will probably offer some form of basic (non '5') RAID functionality.

Daz34

I take it your motherboard doesn't have native SATA then?
If not then you can add a PCI sata controller to run alongside your existing IDE drives. These are less than £15.
The PCI slot will only support sata I speeds though, so your new drives, which will be sata II won't run at full speed but are still faster, in theory, than IDE.
The best thing about them is the tiny cables though.

cottonfoo

You can get SATAII PCI/PCIe controllers that will do 300MB/s, 20 quid.

Daz34

SATA II PCIe cards yes.

SATA I PCI cards yes.

SATA II PCI cards no.

Daz34

Please prove me wrong because I want one

cottonfoo

Err .. google .. SATA2 PCI, one here, few more here.

teajunkie

Excellent im going to go for that option then!

I dont have the sata option on this MB it's a pretty basic compaq presario bought 4 yrs ago.
Never had a single problem with it though and it has 1gb ram so its plenty quick enough for me.

thanks for the info guys

teajunkie

Ok now to ask another stupid question :

Is PCI-e compatable with standard PCI slot or do i have to buy specific PCI card???

Sorry to ask just dont want to waste money and time on non compatible parts.

scoobyverysoon

iTrader: (1)

No its a completly diffrent port