SATA to IDE Adapter... Should I ?

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LeviathanV

Limp Gawd
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May 25, 2005
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I'm planning to purchase several 500GB HDD for a server, but the server doesn't have SATA support. However, I still want to buy SATA drives in case we upgrade towers in the future.

Will this SATA Device to IDE Device Mini Vertical Bridge work well enough, or will it be better to get a PCI Controller card ? and if so, how much better cause its also more expensive... would it be worth the money ?

Or I my just better of sticking to Ultra ATA disks ???

Thanks
 
Is hard disk data transfer rate crucial on this server?
Will you be using RAID?
 
I would go with the controller card or stick with pata. I wouldn't trust those adapters unless I had too.
 
Nenu said:
Is hard disk data transfer rate crucial on this server?
Will you be using RAID?
Click to expand...

No RAID... Data transfer is important, but shouldn't the adapter give you at least the same performance of a PATA Drive from the SATA drive ???


Reliability is of course very important since this will be used in a 24/7 mail server (1 x 500GB) and a 24/7 file server (2 x 500GB)...
 
LeviathanV said:
No RAID... Data transfer is important, but shouldn't the adapter give you at least the same performance of a PATA Drive from the SATA drive ???


Reliability is of course very important since this will be used in a 24/7 mail server (1 x 500GB) and a 24/7 file server (2 x 500GB)...
Click to expand...

I have no idea if those adapters will give you full bandwidth, you would be wise to check up.
They will surely add some latency.
The reliability of the adapters is an unknown.

Personally, I'd get a SATA PCI controller as you are pretty much guaranteed the full bandwidth for the drives. I'd
I havent found a decent 4 channel controller yet that doesnt support RAID and they cost more so its cheaper to get 2 x 2 channel PCI cards if price is a big issue and you have 2 free PCI slots.
 
The cost of a cheap controller would make this painless and you wont need shady adapters.
 
Thanks for your help... The idea of setting up my servers with dated equipment and adapters or sub-par controller cards was making me nervous... So I have decided to try and sell the 4 towers + their respective monitors to help bankroll a new server. I´ll probably be getting a Dual o Quad core Xeon 1.6GHz, and using Virtualization to have the email server separate from my file server. Hopefully I'll have some money left to eventually get a mirror server for next year. For now I'll have to hope the server runs smooth and back-up my data on the old servers...

This is all conditioned to the fact the I can sell the equipment and get a decent price. Otherwise, I might have to come back to this alternative, and spend the money on a decent 4 channel controller card...

Thanks again.
 
thats exactly what I was going to point out.....

besides, I would go with SCSI or SAS if you are building a server
 
You could try it, if it doesn't work exactly for what you need I'm sure it could come in handy at a later date!
 
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