SATA hard drives

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swordfish1

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hi all,

somebody mentioned here on the forum that one can connect more than one drive per single SATA connector.

Can somebody please shine more light on this. I am about to upgrade in december and it seems that there are very few good mobos with more than 4 SATA connectors and I need to be able to put at least 6 drives, 4 of which on RAID5. The ICH7R supports RAID5 (SATA2) and apparently is the only good onboard RAID5 implementation available on the market, so I am mostly concerned with boards with ICH7R. If I can connect 2 drives per connector and make them part of an RAID5 array while the other 2 connectors I use for single drives, my problem will be solved.

thanks in advance
 
Asus P5AD2 Premium 925X Motherboard

Intel ICH6R South Bridge:
- 1 x UltraDMA 100/66/33
- 4 x Serial ATA with Intel Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1 support
Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller:
- 4 x Serial ATA with JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 (RAID 5 software patch available, no WHQL)


Donno about connection 2 sata drives with one sata connector ? can that be done ?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Another option is

http://www.barefeats.com/hard46.html
 
Person said:
Asus P5AD2 Premium 925X Motherboard

Intel ICH6R South Bridge:
- 1 x UltraDMA 100/66/33
- 4 x Serial ATA with Intel Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1 support
Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller:
- 4 x Serial ATA with JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 (RAID 5 software patch available, no WHQL)


Donno about connection 2 sata drives with one sata connector ? can that be done ?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Another option is

http://www.barefeats.com/hard46.html
Click to expand...
thanks Person, but this board looks quite old and quite expensive ... I am trying to find a benchmark of this Silicon Image RAID controler, but this doesn't seem to be very easy.

I quite like the Intel ICH7R, I just have to figure out if the RAID5 works under Linux. I saw a review of the ICH7R and the nForce RAID5, and the nForce sucks big time. I am looking for 945P/G or 955X board, preferably not too expensive. I don't need any other fancy stuff on it, only RAID5 and gigabyte network are required, so I don't feel paying R2000+ for a board with thousand of other functionality.

I am not sure what is your idea with the external SATA controler. I don't want external drives.
 
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64FX / Athlon 64 ATX M/B : Nvidia nForce4 SLI, 2000mt/s FSB, 4x184-pin Dual DDR400 SDRAM (4GB max), 8xS-ATA, 2xATA-133, 2xPCI-E(x16), 2xPCI-E(x1), 3xPCI, 10xUSB, 2xG/B LAN, Realtek ALC850 8 ch audio, No on-board V R 1589 .00 incl VAT

Asus A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 AMD Athlon64, nForce 4 (SLI), 2000MT/s, 4 x Dual DDR400, 2 x PCI-x16, 2 x PCI-x1, 3 x PCI, 2 x ATA133, 8 x SATA (Raid 0, 1 0 + 1.5), Dual Gigabit LAN, 8ch Sound, max 10xUSB, 2 x IEEE1394, ATX R 1699 .00 Incl VAT

DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron ATX M/B :2000mt/s FSB, 4x184-pin Dual DDR400 SDRAM (4GB max), 4xS-ATA, 4xS-ATAII, 2xATA-133, 2xPCI-E(x16), 2xPCI-E(x1), 2xPCI, 10xUSB, 2xGBe LAN, 8-channel audio SP-Dif, 2xIEEE1394, No VGA
 
You can't connect more than one drive per SATA channel - that's why you get so many SATA channels on newer boards.
 
I can only vouch for what I have, an Intel 955xbk motherboard...8 sata ports, 4 on a sil and 4 on ICH7 technology. No worries:-)

Fsck knows where to get it in s.a. though. Probably wont be too cheap either.
 
werner said:
I can only vouch for what I have, an Intel 955xbk motherboard...8 sata ports, 4 on a sil and 4 on ICH7 technology. No worries:-)

Fsck knows where to get it in s.a. though. Probably wont be too cheap either.
Click to expand...
I was trying to find out more about this board, but as usual nobody can tell you anything! They have it in rectron @ about R1500 or so (I can't buy from rectron as I don't have a dealership, but I have their pricelist), but apparently there is an OEM model and the boxed one. The OEM is with 4 SATA ports and the boxed is with 8!

Can you stick 2 VGA cards in this board by the way? I saw that it has PCIe x4/16? What does this mean? I need to upgrade 2 PCs - need one with 2 VGA cards to support up to 4 monitors and the other for bunch of hard drives.

So can anyone here tell me the version that they sell at rectron which one is it, OEM or boxed? Does it have 8 SATA ports? If yes, then this will be the one!
 
Angellus said:
Interesting. Think it is exactly what you were looking for. I have no use for it though but I am glad it does exist.

Good find :)
Click to expand...
I think it is too new ... can't see anyone selling port multipliers in SA and overseas there are very few places.
 
swordfish1 said:
I was trying to find out more about this board, but as usual nobody can tell you anything! They have it in rectron @ about R1500 or so (I can't buy from rectron as I don't have a dealership, but I have their pricelist), but apparently there is an OEM model and the boxed one. The OEM is with 4 SATA ports and the boxed is with 8!

Can you stick 2 VGA cards in this board by the way? I saw that it has PCIe x4/16? What does this mean? I need to upgrade 2 PCs - need one with 2 VGA cards to support up to 4 monitors and the other for bunch of hard drives.

So can anyone here tell me the version that they sell at rectron which one is it, OEM or boxed? Does it have 8 SATA ports? If yes, then this will be the one!
Click to expand...

I dunno about rectron, but mine has 8 sata, 7.1. audio, firewire400 and firewire800, 1 x pcei-x16, 1xpcie-x4 (physically routed to a x16 slot), dolby master studio certification, Intel viiv support, gigabit lan and a bunch of other stuff, it really is one of the best boards I could find in terms of features.
The actual product code off the side of the box is BOXD955XBKLKR.
Just bear in mind you need a moerse power supply, this board has a 24pin connector.
 
thanks werner, can you just clarify the "physically routed to a x16 slot". Does it mean I can stick second video card in it, i.e. 2 cards with 2 monitors on each for 4 monitor configuration? Because as far as I know all video cards are x16.
 
see, I'm no so sure either:-)

It is a x16 slot in appearance, but as far as I understand it only x4 lanes are actually connected. The manual doesnt make much mention what you can or cant do with it, but I understood it to be for ati crossfire support (two gfx cards, one master, one slave). I know the board isnt nvidia sli certified and just assumed it must be for crossfire then:-)

I do see the board on ati's list of crossfire supoprted boards, so I know it is for two graphics cards, but I am not 100% sure it can be any two cards...it may ONLY be for crossfire cards. I cant get a 100% answer on this.
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1518
 
thanks werner!

it seems that this intel board at rectron is the OEM version, so it is very different than the one you have, it doesn't have the optical audio stuff, nor the extra 4 SATA ports. Not sure if somebody else imports intel boards here besides rectron.

The intel web site is very vague in regards with the PCIe x4 slot ...

will keep looking ...
 
swordfish1 said:
I hope you are wrong !!!

so what is this for http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=4000 ?
Click to expand...

Looking at this: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/MotherBoard/Accessory/AccessoryList.htm

I reckon the "4 connectors" is probably 2 cables in the package.

The ONLY difference with SATA2 is that it is a) faster, and b) has a slightly better connector. The connector cable has a metal clip that clicks into place. It is "backward" compatible with normal SATA connectors. The board I have (Gigabyte K8N-SLI) has 4 SATA2 ports with the yellow cables. They work quite happily with my standard SATA drives.

As for the "port multiplier" that you mention in a later post - that looks like it might be your answer, if you need more than 8 SATA drives connected (For those boards that have 8 SATA connectors, obviously) - however you'll probably find that it's horribly expensive, but it will probably support various RAID options etc.

We bought a SATA raid solution at work - adaptec, 4 SATA ports, that supports RAID 5 etc, connects to a 4 drive bay. The bay fits into 2x 5.25" bays. The card + bay was around 10k, not including the drives. Bearing in mind, this is what a corporate paid - you'd probably get that kind of thing cheaper if you have contacts who are dealers.
 
thisgeek said:
Looking at this: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/MotherBoard/Accessory/AccessoryList.htm

I reckon the "4 connectors" is probably 2 cables in the package.

The ONLY difference with SATA2 is that it is a) faster, and b) has a slightly better connector. The connector cable has a metal clip that clicks into place. It is "backward" compatible with normal SATA connectors. The board I have (Gigabyte K8N-SLI) has 4 SATA2 ports with the yellow cables. They work quite happily with my standard SATA drives.

As for the "port multiplier" that you mention in a later post - that looks like it might be your answer, if you need more than 8 SATA drives connected (For those boards that have 8 SATA connectors, obviously) - however you'll probably find that it's horribly expensive, but it will probably support various RAID options etc.

We bought a SATA raid solution at work - adaptec, 4 SATA ports, that supports RAID 5 etc, connects to a 4 drive bay. The bay fits into 2x 5.25" bays. The card + bay was around 10k, not including the drives. Bearing in mind, this is what a corporate paid - you'd probably get that kind of thing cheaper if you have contacts who are dealers.
Click to expand...
thanks, but I am looking for much cheaper solution ... on board raid 5 + 4 x 250GB hitachi SATAII drives @ ~R965 per drive.
 
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