Which PCI SATA card to get?

[elrasho]

I have an old PC and it's motherboard only supports IDE so I plan to get a PCI SATA card to use SATA Hard Drives.

The most important factor is that the computer will need to boot from the SATA card as the primary hard drive with Windows on it. I've searched around and can't find any SATA card that say they are bootable in their specifications.

The BIOS has an option to boot from an "bootable Add-in card" but it all depends on whether or not the BIOS recognises the perticular brand/model of SATA card I get.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[rpstewart]

Finding a plain PCI card with a boot ROM might be tricky, the vast majority now are designed simply as add-ons to machines with on board SATA controllers.

One option might be to look for a cheap second hand PCI-X RAID card although you'll need to check it'll run in a plain PCI card, pretty much all will but it's worth checking. If you go this route also check that there's physically enough space for the rest of the connector outside the normal PCI slot.

 

[R.C.Anderson]

I have a PCI SATA card here that I'm selling on the MM, pretty sure you can boot to it, if your interested, I could try installing an OS onto a drive connected to it, and see? Only problem is it's SATA 1.5Gb/s so not the fastest. Let me know in my thread here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18241927 if you want me to give it a go

EDIT: It's been sold now, but it was an Adaptec 1205SA, they make quite a few different versions of very similar cards, might be worth a look at their site?

 

[rebelit]

PCI Sata advice

Hi I too need some advice on this.

My old Striker extreme died at the weekend. I have bought a Crosshair IV and Phenom II.

I would like if possible to mount the sil 3132 raid 0 (2 drives) to recover some data (although obviously the critical stuff is backed up there's still a lot of less critical stuff that it would be nice to recover from the disk.

I am assuming if I get a PCI sil 3132 sata card that supports RAID 0 I should be able to mount the raid. If I'm not mistaken can anyone recommend a cheap card?

[edit]
Uh oh! I just read through the striker MB manual and realise the RAID was probably built using the onboard nVidia MediaShiled raid controller. I can't seem to find any PCI cards that use this. Can anybody suggest something that will be able to mount the RAID?

Thanks in advance.

PS one last thing - are there any converters that will allow me to attach my IDE optical drive to one of the mobo's SATA ports?