Buffalo DriveStation - PCI SATA?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rob Nicholson
  • Start date Start date
Previously Rob Nicholson said:
I'm looking at one of these:

It comes with a PCI eSATA host adapter. Is PCI enough for SATA drives? Most
of the other eSATA multi-port host adapters I've seen are PCI-X or
PCI-Express for better throughout.
Click to expand...
Cheers, Rob.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "enough"?

Arno
 
Rob Nicholson wrote in news:[email protected]
I'm looking at one of these:

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/products/external-drives/drivestation/drivestation-quattro/
Click to expand...
It comes with a PCI eSATA host adapter.
Click to expand...
Is PCI enough for SATA drives?
Click to expand...

What PCI would that be:
32-bit 33MHz, 32-bit 66MHz, 64-bit 33MHz or 64-bit 66MHz?
Most of the other eSATA multi-port host adapters I've seen are PCI-X
or PCI-Express for better throughout.
Click to expand...

Which you don't actually know, so you made that up.
 
Rob Nicholson wrote in news:[email protected]
Fast enough, e.g. PCI-32 bit versus

(64 bit)
Nonsense.

versus PCI-E (serial).

Cheers, Rob.
Click to expand...
PS. Moot anyway as we've ended up with a Dell XPS which is HUGE but has lots
of SATA bays inside.
Click to expand...

Once again proving how most questions here are often exercises in trolling.
 
Fast enough, e.g. PCI-32 bit versus PCI-X (64 bit) versus PCI-E (serial).
Still unclear.
Click to expand...

Err, why?? Is the PCI-32 bit fast enough (I'll swap the words around) for
four drive eSATA systems...
 
Err, why?? Is the PCI-32 bit fast enough (I'll swap the words around) for
four drive eSATA systems...
Click to expand...

Yes, but fast enough for what? Fast enough to work? Yes. Fast enough
to saturate the SATA bus? No. Fast enough to run application XYZ?
Depends on the application. ....

Arno
 
Yes, but fast enough for what? Fast enough to work? Yes. Fast enough
to saturate the SATA bus? No. Fast enough to run application XYZ?
Click to expand...
^^^ That should be a "depends"



Arno
 
Rob Nicholson said:
Err, why?? Is the PCI-32 bit fast enough (I'll swap the words around) for four drive eSATA
systems...
Click to expand...

Fast enough for any activity on one drive, or random I/O on all.
You will notice slowdown if you copy large files between drives.
 
Fast enough for any activity on one drive, or random I/O on all.
You will notice slowdown if you copy large files between drives.
Click to expand...

I guess this depends how port multipliers work in eSata environments which
will tend to be RAID at some level, possibly just stripped. It's possible
that a file could be stripped across four drives so four read operations
could be running at once thus attempting to feed 4x data down the single
eSATA port multiplier lead to the controller card.

The main reason I asked is that most eSata port multiplier cards are NOT
just PCI-32, they are PCI-X or PCIe.

Cheers, Rob.
 
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