SATA harddrive, EIDE motherboard

That's probably the best option. Some offerings @ Newegg; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...TCH&Description=sata+controller+card&x=8&y=27

The 2 port cards are quite reasonably priced, and "The Egg" has been running such items in their Email flyers.

I suppose it depends how far you intend to go with this machine, as to whether it would be worth springing for the much more expensive 4 port controllers.

 

Is a SATA port compatible with SATA 1, 2 and 3? So is the physical cable the same for the different types of SATA?

EDIT: I ask because if I have a harddrive that uses SATA 2, must I get a raid controller for SATA 2?

 

SATA 1-2-3 share the same physical cable. A mechanical HDD can't even saturate the SATA 1 data transfer spec.

With that said, you should still acquire a 300Gbs SATA 2 controller card. The reason for this is, some HDDs require a jumper to be moved, (or removed, forget which), to run at the older SATA 1 speed. Any drive you're likely to buy, will be SATA 2 anyway.

A "RAID" controller doesn't have to be run as RAID. There is a form of RAID called "JBOD" (Just a bunch of discs), which is what you'll be using. You would just install the drivers that come with the card.

What I don't know, is if this will require a reinstall of Windows. RAID or SATA drivers if you will, must be installed from a floppy drive, part way through installing XP. What I would do here is, after you pick out your controller card, see if you can download the instruction manual beforehand. It's always is a good idea to rehearse before the show.

The easiest way to deal with the driver situation is this; if the controller is able to run your SATA drives as IDE, you should do exactly that. Most people who aren't interested in RAID, set the motherboard SATA controller to run as IDE anyway. There's little to no difference in speed, and you bypass a whole lot of aggravation with drivers

Thinking about SATA 3 (600Gbs), is beyond pointless, unless you are using SSDs in RAID 0 configuration.

And yes, I know there are mechanical drives out there conforming to SATA 3 spec. It's marketing BS, nothing more.