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11866
September 18th, 2008 17:00
XPS GEN3 - external sata controller -- Help
I have a XPS GEN 3, and i have all my hard drive connected to onboard SATA (sata1) controller. Recently i purchased three new hard drives,
1. Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16mb cache
2. Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200rpm 32mb cache
3. Western Digital Caviar Black 700Gb 7200rpm 32mb cache
All three disks and my sata DVDwriter connected to onboard sata controller which only work in sata1 mode. But all my disks supports sata2.
So im planning two buy a pci express x1 sata2 controller (see below link) with 2 sata ports and connect my boot disk and 1tb data disk to that sata2 controller (pci express x1) to take advantage of sata2.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132014
If i'm doing that, will i be able to take advantage of sata2 speed as my mb sata controller is sata1?
In xps gen3 bios, can i change the boot option to boot the os from pci express x1 sata controller?
Thanks for any help!
Dell XPS Generation 3 800MHz FSB
Intel P4
560 3.6ghz
640 3.4ghz
4GB DDR2-SDRAM/ 533MHz
SAPPHIRE 100242-1GL Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Platinum FATAL1TY Champion Series
Logitec Z5500 speakers
Windows Vista 64bit/32bit (multiboot)
Software :Nero8/Norton 360 V2
AlanKS
241 Posts
0
September 19th, 2008 18:00
Install the new card but don't connect the drives initially. Reboot and install the drivers for the card. Shut down, move the hard disk cable to the new card but leave the DVD on the Mobo(it won't benefit from the faster interface).
Reboot again but go into the BIOS, you should get a delay and a missing drives error before the BIOS Screen starts up. Remove the drives from the onboard controller interfaces. The card should be listed in the bootable devices list and you should be able to set wherver you want it in the list.
Save the settings and reboot and the O/S should start as normal.
ge9600
16 Posts
0
September 19th, 2008 18:00
Great. Nice walkthrough. .
But will i see any performace impact (increase or decrease) by moving this to onboard (sata1) to pci x1 sata controller (sata2)?
My disks will support sata2
Thanks
ge9600
16 Posts
0
September 19th, 2008 23:00
AlanKS
241 Posts
0
September 20th, 2008 06:00
SiSoft Sandra (google) is a popular one but you should have benchmarked before and after!
The two controllers will probably attach to the same bus so there would be no penalty for the addon card, therefore the full benefit of the SATA speed should be available.