Thinking of a sata controller card

[Dr Zoidberg]

The 4 sata ports on my board are full and i am looking to expand my hard drive capacity, rather than just replacing drives with bigger ones i am looking at adding a controller card to give me more ports.
But looking is as far as i have got, i dont really know what is best,
I have an Asus PCH-Dl board so have the option of a PCI-X slot for the controller if this is a better option than a standard PCI slot,

I have looked at the Adaptec AAR-1420SA 4-Port SATA-II RAID Controller
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-022-AD&tool=3

Adaptec seem to be a good make from what i have looked at?

Once i have a card fitted i was looking at an Icy Dock
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-017-BT

If i fitted that at least 1 drive from that would have to go on the controller card,

If the controller card has raid options i could be interested in taking advantage of this but would only look at Raid for 2 of the drives connected, is this possible or would it have to be all of them?

Would i be better of connecting the Icy Dock to the ports on the board rather than the card?

Where would the OS drive be better situated? the card or the board? i would prefer to leave it where it is on the board to do away with the reinstall that would no doubt be needed.

Thanks
Keith

 

[djcj]

I was just about to post an identical thread. Thinking of buying the same card due to all my sata ports being used up already. Without wanting to hijack your thread, i'd like to add another question: Does this card take hard drives only? Or can i attach a sata blueray optical drive to it?

 

[rpstewart]

Adaptec seem to be a good make from what i have looked at?

Yeah, one of the best makes out there generally.

If the controller card has raid options i could be interested in taking advantage of this but would only look at Raid for 2 of the drives connected, is this possible or would it have to be all of them?

Haven't played with that exact card but I would be surprised if you couldn't mix RAID and single drives, virtually all RAID cards will allow that.

Would i be better of connecting the Icy Dock to the ports on the board rather than the card?

Shouldn't make any difference.

Where would the OS drive be better situated? the card or the board? i would prefer to leave it where it is on the board to do away with the reinstall that would no doubt be needed.

I'd leave it where it is just now just for the lack of hassle. There isn't much benefit in having it on the card really, sure you could easily lift it onto another board but then you'd probably end up reinstalling anyway to get the new board working.

 

[mnet674]

I've got the PCI-E version of the card along with the icy dock, the adaptec management software is happy to let you run disks in JBOD, make an array with 2 disks and leave the rest etc.

I have a pair of WD5000AAKS drives in the dock in raid 1 connected up to the card and there is no noticeable performance difference compared with the built in nForce 4 sata controller.

 

[Dr Zoidberg]

Thanks for the replys, all sounds good, looks like it is time to go shopping.

 

[Dr Zoidberg]

mnet674 or any one else who has an icy dock, do you use the hot swap ability's of it? does it work? is it happy to let you plug / unplug drives while XP is running ?