Adding SATA II hard drive and need a SATA II PCI card questions

[lmohr79]

I have a Dell Dimension 2350 with XP Home Edition. Bought a Maxtor 300 GB hard drive that is SATA II, but of course the Dell doesn't have SATA II, only ATA.

I do have an open PCI slot, but since I normally don't do hardware, have some questions:

1) Can I use a PCI Express card? not sure what the difference between PCI & PCIe.

2) As I'm looking at cards, if the specs indicated XP 64 bit, should I assume won't work with XP Home?

3) Anything to watch out for when installing? Still haven't decided if this will be the new boot drive (remove the old hard drive), or just a storage - can you advise/recommend?

Thanks for any help you can give - this has to be one of the best forums out there, I've either always found the answer or someone has given me the right info!

 

[BadBigBen]

Ok...

1. NO PCI Express will not do...

as to the specification diffs, read:

PCI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect

PCIe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

PCI X

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X

2. Probable... may not be the case at all, but the supplied driver is for x64 XP only...

3. installing is usually straight forward, plug in the card while the PC is off, make sure that it is seated correctly... then power up into windows and install the SATA driver that comes with the CD supplied (some do not come with cd's as windows has some build in driver that works...

if you want to use the new drive as the boot drive, your BIOS and the SATA Cards BIOS should allow the use the drives as BOOT devices... The BIOS must allow booting from attached cards...

Basically all drives are backward compatible, this means that a SATA II drive will work on a SATA I controller, albeit it will not be as fast as on a SATA II controller...

here is a Newegg list of cards that would work fine with XP HOME...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N=2010010073 1187112438&name=PCI to SATA Card

only drawback is that they are all SATA I cards... for DATA storage they will suffice...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[wahnula]

As I'm looking at cards, if the specs indicated XP 64 bit, should I assume won't work with XP Home?

Not necessarily. 64-bit usually means an extended-PCI (PCI-X) formfactor that might just work with your 32-bit standard-PCI slot. I use (and recommend) a 64-bit/32-bit 3Ware 9500S SATA Raid card in my 32-bit standard-PCI server, many 64-bit PCI-X cards work just fine in a PCI/32-bit machine, just make sure you have room for the oversize card.

I would recommend two things:

1) Get a brand-name card (3Ware, Areca, Promise, Adaptec). The price premium will pay off in usefulness down the road;

2) Get at least a 4-port SATA RAID card, even if you're not planning on using RAID. 6-or-8-ports are better. You will leave yourself some room to "grow into" the cards and avoid "I wish I..."

You can also use any good-quality card as a boot drive (or array), which makes it even easier to upgrade your system without reformatting & reinstalling Windows. Better cards even give you valuable features like email warnings and complete logging.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[paparazi]

Well I'm going to buck the trend and give you completely different advice.
You will be paying more for an inrerface card than the cost of the drive so....in my opinion.
1) Firstly, can you swap the drive for a standard IDE type?
or
2) If you bought this type to ensure future proofness...
then buy an external hard drive housing...SATAII to USB2, at least this way it can be used as removable safe storage and then come upgrade time use as boot drive.

For example only;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817193038

Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[wahnula]

Well a standard PCI SATA card IS cheaper than a new drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124020

...and I really did not shop for bottom line:

http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?products_id=8426

...this was a quick grab at

http://www.pricewatch.com

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[paparazi]

I guess I had one eye on lmohr79's last question;
Still haven't decided if this will be the new boot drive (remove the old hard drive), or just a storage - can you advise/recommend?
Where fitting this HDD into a housing would satisfy the later (storage) with the option to use as boot in a future upgrade.
Given the age of the system there isn't going to be a substantial performance gain by installing this drive through a PCI SATA card. The reason being that there are bottlenecks in the system of this age ie; memory, chipset and CPU that wouldn't allow the system to take full advantage of this drives potential (and the reason why I made my suggestions)
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[lmohr79]

Thanks to all the replys - ended up getting a SATA I card, installed OK and then added the new HD as additional storage.

I appreciate all the insight, really helped a lot!