SATA PCI card recommendations

[tomonica]

I have done extensive searching & found very limited info on this subject.

One of my PC's has an ASUS A7V8X-X mobo & all IDE channels are at full capacity. I'm considering getting a SATA PCI card so I can add a SATA drive to this board.

I would like to hear from anyone that is using a SATA card in a PCI slot in their mobo & if you had any problems. Info from anyone that has an A7V8X-X with this setup would be great!

 

[Cinders]

I recently purchased a SATA contoller card based off an Initio chip from Ebay for $13.00 and it had conflicts with my old SIS 735 chipset based motherboard and has zero support from the chip manufacturer. Eventually I went with a Vantec UGT-ST200 SATA PCI host card from Tiger Direct for $20.00. It's built on a Silicon Image 3512A chip and has so far worked flawlessly. If you are so inclined you can update the cards BIOS with the most recent BIOS from Silicon Image. I saw both Basic and RAID BIOSs for the chip on the SiI site leaving me to believe that you can have an extra RAID array if you want to experiment with a different BIOS. The card allows you to hot swap a drive, and it can see all the space on a drive larger than 137GB. It can also be used as the controller for your computer's primary boot drive.

 

[tomonica]

Thanks, Cinders. I've read some good comments on the controller cards with Silicon Image chips. Promise Technologies also has some good reviews.

I'll have to see if Tiger Direct will ship to the Virgin Islands.