Sata Hub Questions

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bencho

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Sep 15, 2007
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Hi,

I have built an external HDD setup that will allow for up to 8 hdd's using Silverstone Bay Convertors. I am currently running 2 sata drives, which are read through a sata-usb2 converter from usbgeeks.com. And am powering them through an old 300 watt psu. Now This can get very tedius and expensive for the sata-usb wires, so I went googling for a SATA HUB, or the equivalent of a usb hub for multiple devices. I found this:

http://www.cooldrives.com/sahub5muussi.html

Before I run out and get one, i want to clarify some things.

1. Will this allow me to run hdd sata cables straight to the hub, and then one sata cable from the hub, directly onto my mobo?

2. Will i be able to access info from all hdd's simultaneously [if need be, ie moving data from one to the other//OR//moving files from two hdd's onto one hdd thats sata'd to my mobo directly.]

3. Will all hdd's operate at full transfer speed? or will it be split among the amount of drives being accessed?

Thanks!
 
With 5 drives attached you'll probably be slightly over the sustained transfer rate and definately will loose almost all of the cache benefits. A single 7200RPM drive has a sustained xfer rate of ~ATA66, 5 could saturate ATA330. SATA2.0 has the equivalent bandwidth of ATA300.

The device itself could potentially have other bottlenecks. Having never used it, I can't say one way or the other.
 
A single Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 has an avg transfer rate of 65MB/s.
SATA3.0Gbps max bandwidth is 300MB/s.

That hub can connect 5 sata devices to a single sata port, but I think you're still limited to the 300MB/s bandwidth of the single port its connected to on the system.

1) the hub is e-sata, so you'll need e-sata cables, not sata cables.
2) if it does what its supposed to do, yes.
3) split, I believe.
 
Ok...

So if i buy this hub, I'll have to use sata cables from the hdds to the hub, and then one esata cable from the hub to a esata PCI card right? then use another regular sata cable from the card to the sata pin on mobo.

Is this right?
 
It looks like the hub uses eSATA ports, but I'm not certain.
 
If you don't necessarily need the drives separate, you could get this. It's more expensive, but it eliminates the extra power supply, loose wires, and all that. Something to consider, anyways.
 
Yea, i was trying to get away from buying one of those because of the high price for merely the cage and PM built it. Thats why i went DIY and built my own version, which i think looks better with my setup anyway.

Anyway, I went looking for eSata pcie cards, but i found two different types & and unsure of which to use.

http://www.usb-ware.com/siig-esata-pcie-sata-ii-card.htm
There is this one which has two esata ports and fits in a pcix1 slot. However there is no visible connector on the board to link it to a sata port. Does this mean all data is handled by the pcix1 slot?

http://www.cooldrives.com/ss42chesrapc.html
And this one which has 4 esata ports, and two internal ports??

http://www.computervideogear.com/sata/pcie-sata-ii-card-intenal-external.htm
And this one is the one i think i should be buying?

Im confused as to how they operate.
 
However there is no visible connector on the board to link it to a sata port. Does this mean all data is handled by the pcix1 slot?
Click to expand...
Yep. All these cards work like that. The internal ports connect to internal drives, but they still go thru the PCIe lanes, just like any other expansion card.
If you only need one external port, buy a card with one external port.
 
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