PCI Sata

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andysh

177 posts

Master Geek

# 42749 9-Oct-2009 16:13

Hey guys,

So managed to get an old computer, but only has PCI slots and IDE. Are there any reasonable PCI cards out there for SATA? How many drives per PCI do you think is reasonable?

Thanks for the help!

andysh

Ragnor

8033 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 262838 9-Oct-2009 17:12

Heaps on trade me
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/SearchResults.aspx?searchType=0002-&searchString=PCI+SATA&type=Search

.. but anything so old it doesn't have SATA should most likley be scrapped/recycled imo!

SepticSceptic

1770 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 263420 12-Oct-2009 09:44

As above, perfectly do-able. Have a PCI SATA card in a repurposed HP mini tower running Windows Home Server, primarily as a media server. Works OK. You could get up to 4 or more SATA ports per card, but the PCI bus will be a bottleneck. AFAIR any devices on the PCI bus share the total bandwidth , so the more cards you have in there, more the bandwidth is reduced. This also includes on-board network and video - they share the same PCI bus.

My thoughts are no longer my own and is probably representative of our media-controlled government

andysh

177 posts

Master Geek

# 263551 12-Oct-2009 20:14

Hey,

I am actually looking at getting a new Mobo now, thought I would do it right. Was thinking of ECS A780GM-A Motherboard. Now I see that it has onboard ATI? Radeon HD3200 graphics, any ideas if that would be good enough to run Freeview HD (trying to turn two boxes into one here...)

Andysh

SepticSceptic

1770 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 263630 13-Oct-2009 09:26

Might pay to ask in the Home Theatre forum ,,,,

My thoughts are no longer my own and is probably representative of our media-controlled government

andysh

177 posts

Master Geek

# 263783 13-Oct-2009 22:40

Yea been having a look, looks like it might be possible which is cool, prob have to run Windows 7 in virtual PC so can have native media centre interface instead of dealing with MediaPortal or something similar.

Well I have been playing around with my old comp which has the trail of WHS on it and have one question (at this stage :P). I have got all my music on the server, and I have a laptop which I take around a lot with me to uni etc. Now I don't want the whole music on my laptop, so can't really have "always available offline" feature for all the music. I always want a selection of music which is in different folders (organised by artist). Is there a way to create a playlist in WMP 12 (windows 7) and have that always available offline, or something similar?

Thanks for the help!
andysh

SepticSceptic

1770 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 263822 14-Oct-2009 09:53

Hmm, I know what you are trying to achieve - haven't had that requirement myself, so I can't really give you any pointers. I just usually end up copying a bunch of music folders to the laptop destination. Would be more elegant to manage playlists though :-)

My thoughts are no longer my own and is probably representative of our media-controlled government