SATA controller questions

[superklye]

I don't really know much about SATA at all, so I figured I woudl ask you guys. With the two SATA ports/whatever on my mobo, does that mean I can only hook up two SATA drives? Or do they make dual cables like they do with IDE cables/devices?

Also, how would I go about setting up a RAID on this thing using the SATA ports? Do I put one drive on each of the ports, or, if it's possible, do I have two on one or what?

[nrs421]

yep...you can only hook up two sata drives. one drive to each connector....as for RAID never tried setting it up as i've never had a use for it but it's an option in my bios on how to use the SATA drives..

[saturnotaku]

If you only have two hard drives, I would advise against going RAID-0. If your windows install or one of the drives goes south, you will lose everything. That said, you can still use the RAID controller to set a pair of drives up as separate partitions. I did this for a number of months on my old NF7-S. I snagged a second SATA to PATA adapter and hooked up both of my old WD 80 GB drives to the SATA controller. Then I had my optical drives on separate PATA channels for the ultimate in storage device efficiency. :)

The NF7-S should use a Silicon Image SATA controller, which IMO is superior to the NVIDIA controllers on the nForce3 and 4 boards. My K8N Neo4 has one of these controllers and it's what I use instead of the NVIDIA RAID. The BIOS/setup is exceptionally easy to use. When I hooked up my Raptors, the drives were recognized right away. All I had to do was go into the RAID BIOS, tell it to create a new RAID-0 array, let it auto-configure then it was done. Your motherboard manual should provide all the information you need to get up and running.

[superklye]

Okay thanks guys...and that kind sucks that it's only one driver per connector. But what can you do?

How much was an extra PATA>SATA dealie?

[saturnotaku]

It was something like $20-25 when I bought it, but that was more than 18 months ago. I know ExcaliberPC had them in stock, but their site is down until mid March. Check on Pricewatch, or Abit themselves might sell them.

[Rytr]

Okay thanks guys...and that kind sucks that it's only one driver per connector. But what can you do?

How much was an extra PATA>SATA dealie?

Think I have a couple. PM me if you are interested in one...shipping would take care of it.

[superklye]

Think I have a couple. PM me if you are interested in one...shipping would take care of it.
sweet. ygPM