Introduction The PCI Serial - ATA IDE Controller Card provides an inexpensive way for users to increase the speed or fault-tolerance of their PC. IT cam upgrade your desktop computer to have 2 or 4 Serial - ATA channels . It is fully compliant Serial ATA ports on the device side to access Setial ATA storage media such as hard disk drives, external enclosure. CD- ROM / RW and DVD - ROM /RW drives. # Features The Serial - ATA PCI card is a true 32-bit PCI -BUS serial ATA card. IT supports the following I/O features : PCI Plug and Play compatibility. Serial ATA Specifications 1.0 compatible. Provides 2 or 4 Serial -ATA -devices. 1.5 GB/second maximum burst rate. Integrated PCI DMA engines. Supports spread Spectrum in receiver.
I've gotten a lot of mails recently asking about hard drive upgrades or purchases. (Firewire, IDE internal, portable or AC powered cases, build your own vs buying a completed drive, how to upgrade a drive in a desktop or powerbook, what model/revision machine they have, etc.). I know most regular readers already know what I'm about to discuss and/or have read the articles/guides here already, but there are many computer owners that are less experienced or new to this site (or have never checked the topics page links and FAQ). Most of them own IDE based Macs, so that's what I'll focus on. For those readers, here's some practical advice and things to consider. I'll use some concrete examples to help you decide what's the best path and value and include some links to more info and guides.
(I've not had a lot of sleep recently so this may be a bit rambling, but bear with me and skip over anything you're not interested in.)First a reminder on IDE drive specs - although most all current IDE drives are ATA/100 rated, they're backward compatible with even the ATA/3 controller in the Beige G3 (and even older IDE based Macs like the Starmax and PowerBase clones - the drive database here has reports even on those older models from owners that installed large, modern ATA/100 or ATA/66 drives).For desktop Macs with an open PCI slot, you can add a PCI Controller card to increase performance if your Mac has an older interface, or to add more drives if the onboard connections are full. See the IDE articles page for more info. (OS X compatible PCI IDE cards currently include the Acard ATA/66, Turbomax ATA/66, Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 (both made by Acard), and the Acard and Sonnet ATA/66 hardware RAID cards. (The VST IDE card and out of production Turbomax ATA/33 are not OS X compatible as noted previously on the OS X and PCI IDE card owner reports page.)Remember your internal drive is where the OS and most (usually all) of your applications reside and where 90% (or more) of your disk activity occurs even for owners of external drives. Therefore it should be the first drive you upgrade unless you already have (or your Mac came with) a large/fast drive. An external drive will get less use and have far less impact on your overall system performance than a large and fast primary internal drive. (And the external drive will usually cost more also due to the added cost of the case.)External drives are great for backups, data storage, or sharing between computers (sneakernet), but if your primary internal drive isn't large enough or is old/slow, take care of that issue first for the best bang for the buck.If your Desktop Mac supports two IDE drives (Master/Slave) you can add a 2nd (slave) drive, which could be used just for data, or for OS X only, etc. (There's no room for 2 hard drives in the iMac or Cube however.) Here's a listing of Beige G3 and later Mac models (IDE based) with some general info on adding/upgrading drives to be aware of:
I've gotten a lot of mails recently asking about hard drive upgrades or purchases. (Firewire, IDE internal, portable or AC powered cases, build your own vs buying a completed drive, how to upgrade a drive in a desktop or powerbook, what model/revision machine they have, etc.). I know most regular readers already know what I'm about to discuss and/or have read the articles/guides here already, but there are many computer owners that are less experienced or new to this site (or have never checked the topics page links and FAQ). Most of them own IDE based Macs, so that's what I'll focus on. For those readers, here's some practical advice and things to consider. I'll use some concrete examples to help you decide what's the best path and value and include some links to more info and guides.
(I've not had a lot of sleep recently so this may be a bit rambling, but bear with me and skip over anything you're not interested in.)First a reminder on IDE drive specs - although most all current IDE drives are ATA/100 rated, they're backward compatible with even the ATA/3 controller in the Beige G3 (and even older IDE based Macs like the Starmax and PowerBase clones - the drive database here has reports even on those older models from owners that installed large, modern ATA/100 or ATA/66 drives).For desktop Macs with an open PCI slot, you can add a PCI Controller card to increase performance if your Mac has an older interface, or to add more drives if the onboard connections are full. See the IDE articles page for more info. (OS X compatible PCI IDE cards currently include the Acard ATA/66, Turbomax ATA/66, Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 (both made by Acard), and the Acard and Sonnet ATA/66 hardware RAID cards. (The VST IDE card and out of production Turbomax ATA/33 are not OS X compatible as noted previously on the OS X and PCI IDE card owner reports page.)Remember your internal drive is where the OS and most (usually all) of your applications reside and where 90% (or more) of your disk activity occurs even for owners of external drives. Therefore it should be the first drive you upgrade unless you already have (or your Mac came with) a large/fast drive. An external drive will get less use and have far less impact on your overall system performance than a large and fast primary internal drive. (And the external drive will usually cost more also due to the added cost of the case.)External drives are great for backups, data storage, or sharing between computers (sneakernet), but if your primary internal drive isn't large enough or is old/slow, take care of that issue first for the best bang for the buck.If your Desktop Mac supports two IDE drives (Master/Slave) you can add a 2nd (slave) drive, which could be used just for data, or for OS X only, etc. (There's no room for 2 hard drives in the iMac or Cube however.) Here's a listing of Beige G3 and later Mac models (IDE based) with some general info on adding/upgrading drives to be aware of:
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