On 22 Jun 2004 16:55:47 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (Mad Scientist Jr)
wrote:
~Hi
~
~i am interested in purchasing four SATA hard drives (such as Western
~Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive) to put in one XP Pro system.
~
~My computer is pretty old (athalon thunderbird 1.4, BIOSTAR M7VIB
~motherboard
~ from 2001, has a ATA100 card in it) and I'm sure I would need to add
~some controller cards, upgrade the power supply, etc.
~
~Can anyone tell me what hardware I would need, including power supply,
~for a system with 4 hard drives and a CD-RW ?
~
~I'm sure I'd need
~* PCI SATA controller card or cards for 4 hard drives
~* Power supply that can support 4 hard drives, motherboard with 1 GB
~GAM, and CD-RW, dual head video card, coupla sound cards (1 game, 1
~pro)
~
~Thanks a lot
I have two systems with multiple hard drives but have not made the change over
to SATA. The power supply is important as is a good quality UPS. When I
upgraded one system I upgraded the power supply to a 400W unit I bought from a
local vendor. I am trying to find the brand name without opening the case.
Heat buildup inside the case should be a concern. Four hard drives adds a fair
amount of heat so you may need an additional exhaust fan. Make sure you get one
of the whisper style fans. You will need an S-ATA controller that can support
four drives and an an S-ATA drive cable for each drive. Both Promise and SIIG
sell such cards. I have had good results with both Promise and SIIG but neither
company responded to my email inquiry regarding issues I had with multiple CDROM
drives connected to an UATA card so if you have technical problems you're
probably on your own. On the other hand I was trying something unusual and had
no such issues when I was using disk drives and a more conventional number of
CDROM drives.
With four hard drives, even the comparitivly quiet Seagate drives; a beefed up
power supply and an additional cooling fan you could have a system that
generates enough noise to make your ears ring after a few hours of usage.
Research the power supply carefully and choose wisely.
One option is a power supply from
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/home.htm but my
local vendor did not think they were all that great. Another option is
http://www.whispertec.com/psu.html which is well vented and has what looks to be
a larger fan than conventional supplies which means it can displace the same
volume of air at a lower velocity. This means it should make less noise and
might be more efficient at removing heat. Whispertec is UK based and I cannot
make any assessment of quality or suitability. Anyone here ever heard of them?
Enermax makes a similar unit.
Here's a review of power supplies
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=233&p=1
Some more observations. A good powersupply will weigh more because it uses a
heavier transformer. You need a good transformer to make clean DC power.
http://stores.yahoo.com/directron/psu.html
Even More
http://www.jeffchan.com/pc/quietp4.html
Keep us posted here. I want to do the same thing and I'm interested in how a
legacy P3 or older P4 system performs with such a configuration.
