Speed question regarding a hard drive connection.

[parks5855]

Hi, I have a question about my hard drive connection.  I recently bought a new pc and didn't realize at the time that there were only two Serial ATA header connections on the motherboard.  My old pc had 3 hard drives in it and I planned to install two of them into my new pc.  I soon found out that I didn't have enough motherboard connections for this but I found a workaround.  In one of my hard drive boxes I found a pci card that would allow me to connect two SATA drives to it.  I've installed it and it works fine.  Now to the question, I like high end gaming so I'm concerned about the access speed of my drives via this kind of connection.  Is connecting through a pci slot any slower than a direct connection via a motherboard header?  If so, how much slower?  Great website!  Thanks for the help.  Brian

[Salmon Trout]

The speed of the PCI bus is much faster than the speed that any hard drive is capable of delivering data.

[parks5855]

Thanks for the information.....much appreciated!  One more question regarding this same issue, the pci card accommodates 2 SATA connectors.  So if I'm running two hard drives off the one pci slot does that slow it down?  Only concerned because of my high end gaming.  The newest gen first person shooters can really tend to stress a system if things aren't optimal.  Thanks again for the info.  Brian

[BC_Programmer]

high-end gaming doesn't demand as much from the hard drive as people seem to think unless you don't have enough memory.

Again, the speed of the PCI bus is faster then any HD is capable of delivering data; that is, the PCI bus runs at 133Mhz, and in many cases transfers twice per clock cycle, giving an effective rate of 266Mhz, either way, you won't be trying to transfer anything more then a few megabytes from any one hard drive at a time, regardless of the programs you run.

[Salmon Trout]

Well, as I understand it, the slowest (32 bit) PCI bus speed is around 130 megabytes a second, and the fastest hard drives cannot manage a sustained transfer speed of more than about 50 megabytes a second (that's the physical rate the drive can support, not the bus speed) so you have some overhead even with 2 drives. You have not said what brand & model your PCI SATA card is. Anyhow, why don't you try the rig out and see how it performs and let us know? The information may well be useful for other people looking for information about this topic.

[parks5855]

Hey guys, thanks, I really appreciate the help and info.  My pci card came with a Maxtor hard drive I bought....don't know if it's made by Maxtor or who makes it.  There was no documentation on the card, only on the drive.  But at least it seems like I'm not going to have to mess with it further, I was worried that if there was a speed problem I might have to buy a new motherboard.......whew.....dodged that bullet!     Thanks again, Brian