PCI SATA controller cards
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From: Daniel Prince on 23 Mar 2010 02:26 I want to buy a PCI SATA controller card so that I can use a two-terabyte SATA hard drive in my old computer. Are there any brands I should seek out or avoid? Are there any chipsets I should seek out or avoid? So far all the ones I have found on eBay have a VIA chipset or they do not list the chipset. Is the VIA chipset good for PCI SATA controller cards? I know that VIA chipset USB controller cards are supposed to not be very good. Thank you in advance for all replies. -- Whenever I hear or think of the song "Great green gobs of greasy grimey gopher guts" I imagine my cat saying; "That sounds REALLY, REALLY good. I'll have some of that!"
From: Paul on 23 Mar 2010 02:51 Daniel Prince wrote: > I want to buy a PCI SATA controller card so that I can use a > two-terabyte SATA hard drive in my old computer. Are there any > brands I should seek out or avoid? Are there any chipsets I should > seek out or avoid? > > So far all the ones I have found on eBay have a VIA chipset or they > do not list the chipset. Is the VIA chipset good for PCI SATA > controller cards? I know that VIA chipset USB controller cards are > supposed to not be very good. > > Thank you in advance for all replies. I don't really understand why there is so little interest in making the PCI SATA cards any more. The SIL3112 and SIL3114 are examples of other chips that do the job. Maybe the profit margin just isn't big enough to attract more interest. With SIL3112, there was a bug in the boot prom, that causes a hang if a 1TB SATA drive is connected. As long as the card is re-flashable, that can be corrected with a firmware update. The SiliconImage.com web site carries the latest firmware. http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=63&cat=15&ctid=2& With VIA, you might have to insert the "Force150" jumper on the drive, to get the drive recognized. With one exception, VIA chips have a negotiation bug, that prevents SATA 300 drives from working out that they should downshift to 150. By using the Force150 jumper, you can bypass that bug. My Asrock motherboard with the VT8237S, is one of the few VIA chips where they actually fixed that problem and the VT8237S worked flawlessly for me, with SATA drives. If you're going with the VIA PCI card, make sure the drive you buy, has a jumper area on the back. The Seagate drives I use here, have four pins, and two of those pins are used for "Force150". "Force150" makes no appreciable difference to performance (I've tried it both ways and if you blindfolded me, I couldn't tell you whether the jumper was in or out). Paul
From: Daniel Prince on 23 Mar 2010 07:55 Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote: >Daniel Prince wrote: >> I want to buy a PCI SATA controller card so that I can use a >> two-terabyte SATA hard drive in my old computer. Are there any >> brands I should seek out or avoid? Are there any chipsets I should >> seek out or avoid? >> >> So far all the ones I have found on eBay have a VIA chipset or they >> do not list the chipset. Is the VIA chipset good for PCI SATA >> controller cards? I know that VIA chipset USB controller cards are >> supposed to not be very good. >> >> Thank you in advance for all replies. > >I don't really understand why there is so little interest in making >the PCI SATA cards any more. The SIL3112 and SIL3114 are examples >of other chips that do the job. Maybe the profit margin just >isn't big enough to attract more interest. > >With SIL3112, there was a bug in the boot prom, that causes a >hang if a 1TB SATA drive is connected. As long as the card >is re-flashable, that can be corrected with a firmware update. >The SiliconImage.com web site carries the latest firmware. > >http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=63&cat=15&ctid=2& > >With VIA, you might have to insert the "Force150" jumper on the >drive, to get the drive recognized. With one exception, VIA >chips have a negotiation bug, that prevents SATA 300 drives >from working out that they should downshift to 150. By using >the Force150 jumper, you can bypass that bug. My Asrock >motherboard with the VT8237S, is one of the few VIA chips >where they actually fixed that problem and the VT8237S worked >flawlessly for me, with SATA drives. If you're going with the >VIA PCI card, make sure the drive you buy, has a jumper area >on the back. The Seagate drives I use here, have four pins, >and two of those pins are used for "Force150". "Force150" makes >no appreciable difference to performance (I've tried it both >ways and if you blindfolded me, I couldn't tell you whether the >jumper was in or out). > > Paul Do you know if Western Digital and Hitachi two terabyte drives have "Force150" jumpers? I have found some Promise Technology cards. Are they better than the VIA? One uses the Promise Technology PDC20376 interface chip. I have also found some Silicon Image cards. Are they better than the Via and Promise Technology cards? -- I don't understand why they make gourmet cat foods. I have known many cats in my life and none of them were gourmets. They were all gourmands!
From: Paul on 23 Mar 2010 13:07 Daniel Prince wrote: > > Do you know if Western Digital and Hitachi two terabyte drives have > "Force150" jumpers? > > I have found some Promise Technology cards. Are they better than > the VIA? One uses the Promise Technology PDC20376 interface chip. > > I have also found some Silicon Image cards. Are they better than > the Via and Promise Technology cards? The Hitachi drives I've looked at in the past, didn't have jumpers. Hitachi expects you to connect the drive to a SATA II capable controller, and then use their Feature Tool to make changes. What I can't tell you, is whether a Hitachi SATA II drive ships running at 150 or 300 by default. Since the drives are supposed to auto-negotiate, logically it should ship at 300. http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_215.pdf You really need to look at pictures of the product, to see whether it has jumpers or not. This Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 has a two pin block on the back of the drive, but it isn't documented anywhere. Not even in the 260 page technical spec on the Hitachi web site. Why write a 260 page spec, including a picture showing the pins, and not say a word about them ? http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/22-145-298-Z03?$S640W$ http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Deskstar_7K2000 On this Western Digital, you can see room for four jumpers. http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/22-136-456-Z08?$S640W$ This is the Western Digital jumper info. The four positions include a position for Force150 and a position for Spread Spectrum. Spread Spectrum caused problems for early Macintosh computers with SATA. You shouldn't need Spread Spectrum (either on or off) for other PC type hardware. Spread Spectrum technology is used to spread radio frequency emissions, to fool the FCC. If you take an SS item into an anechoic chamber and sweep out to 10GHz or whatever the top frequency is now, the SS helps the emissions stay below the max allowable line on the graph. Chances are, Spread Spectrum is already enabled on the drive, and if a Spread Spectrum jumper is present, it is there to allow the feature to be disabled. http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3698&p_created=#jumper ******* One other thing you should be aware of, is "Advanced Format" drives. Up until recently, all hard drives you could buy at retail, used 512 byte sectors. But a new kind of drive has been defined, where the sectors are 4096 bytes. One purpose of this, is to help breach the 2TB storage barrier. The only popular OS which is not happy with this development, is WinXP. Some of the newer OSes have provisions for dealing efficiently with the issue. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691 http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18115 As far as I'm concerned, this technology should only be used on drives that need it. Like drives over 2TB. To introduce this and force it on all hard drives, regardless of size, is stupid. And yet that is the long term plan. There was another article (which I didn't bookmark), which mentions that the entire industry plans to transition to the 4KB format. Paul
From: larry moe 'n curly on 23 Mar 2010 15:49
Daniel Prince wrote: > > Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote: > > I want to buy a PCI SATA controller card so that I can use a > two-terabyte SATA hard drive in my old computer. Are there any > brands I should seek out or avoid? Are there any chipsets I should > seek out or avoid? > > So far all the ones I have found on eBay have a VIA chipset or they > do not list the chipset. Is the VIA chipset good for PCI SATA > controller cards? I know that VIA chipset USB controller cards are > supposed to not be very good. > > > I don't really understand why there is so little interest in making > > the PCI SATA cards any more. The SIL3112 and SIL3114 are examples > > of other chips that do the job. Maybe the profit margin just > > isn't big enough to attract more interest. > > > > With SIL3112, there was a bug in the boot prom, that causes a > > hang if a 1TB SATA drive is connected. As long as the card > > is re-flashable, that can be corrected with a firmware update. > > The SiliconImage.com web site carries the latest firmware. > > > > http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=63&cat=15&ctid=2& > > > > With VIA, you might have to insert the "Force150" jumper on the > > drive, to get the drive recognized. With one exception, VIA > > chips have a negotiation bug, that prevents SATA 300 drives > > from working out that they should downshift to 150. By using > > the Force150 jumper, you can bypass that bug. My Asrock > > motherboard with the VT8237S, is one of the few VIA chips > > where they actually fixed that problem and the VT8237S worked > > flawlessly for me, with SATA drives. If you're going with the > > VIA PCI card, make sure the drive you buy, has a jumper area > > on the back. The Seagate drives I use here, have four pins, > > and two of those pins are used for "Force150". "Force150" makes > > no appreciable difference to performance (I've tried it both > > ways and if you blindfolded me, I couldn't tell you whether the > > jumper was in or out). > > Do you know if Western Digital and Hitachi two terabyte drives have > "Force150" jumpers? Western Digital and Seagate drives have Force 150 jumpers. For WD drives they're the two pins in the column under "OPTI" (second-closest to the SATA connectors): https://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/other/2579-001037.pdf For Seagate drives, they're the two pins farthest from the SATA connectors: http://www.seagate.com/images/support/en/us/cuda_sata_block.gif Hitachi and Samsung drives have jumpers that don't do anything on current models, so to set the 150Gbytes/sec speed limit you have to run a utility program that writes stuff to the drive's flash BIOS chip. Hitachi's program is called Feature Tool, while Samsung's is EStool (not anything else, contrary to what Samsung wrongly claims). Unfortunately these programs work only if your hardware is compatible with 300Gbytes/sec drives, but some 150Gbytes/sec computers are -- none of mine, of course, except for some old Dell GX270 Optiplexes I found in the trash. I probably have the same model Asrock mobo that Paul does, only mine has the plain 8237 controller that hates 300Gbytes/sec HDs. :( |