Which PCI Sata Card for an SSD ???

[Hermann]

I'm looking for a PCI Sata controller card that can recognise an SSD drive and boot from it.

My current Motherboards Via 8237 chipset won't recognise an SSD so I thought I'd try a PCI Sata controller card. However the ones I can find seem to be VT6421A based and there is some info on the internet that VT6421A based controllers won't recognise SSDs either.

It all seems to be about speed control. The SSDs I think need a min of SATA 2 to auto-negotiate speed and these Sata controllers don't seem to be fully sata 2. With an HDD they often have jumpers to set to cure the issue but SSDs don't have the jumpers!

I realise its not an ideal way to use an SSD and that speeds will be lower using a PCI card but I'd like to try it out if possible.

Motherboard is MSI KM4M-V using Via 8237 chipset.

SSD is Crucial c300 64GB.

So does anyone know of a PCI card that is confirmed as working and bootable with an SSD?

[arthurleung]

For SATA2 support the cheapest choice is likely to be a SIL 3124 based card. Otherwise there are a few PCI-X hardware RAID cards that will run SATA2 too. Note that not all PCI-X cards can run on regular PCI slots.

Note that the speed will be less than 100MB/s regardless of what card you choose. PCI bus is not 100% efficient.

[Hermann]

I'd also wondered about using an IDE to Sata adaptor, which presumably would be better than sharing the PCI bus.

Something like this ....
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=577057

Only trouble is I haven't found one that clearly states that it's Sata 2 and bootable.

[spoon_]

You bought C300 SSD and want to use PCI SATA controller?

Something surely isn't quite right here...

C300 is SATA-600 i.e. SATA3 6Gb/s

Your mobo:

• Serial ATA/150 controller integrated in VT8237.

Do yourself a favour and either replace the mobo or buy decent mechanical hard drive [which will be limited by your SATA controller anyway]

Either way you coc*** it up

[Hermann]

Don't worry I knew it was never going to be great performance with this mobo!

And yes I knew it needed a Sata 3 Mobo to get the performance!

However I'd be interested to see how much difference an SSD would make to such a system, obviously transfer rates are going to be down and the system overall is never going to be a great performer but does an SSD make any noticeable difference to such a system? Don't know if I don't try!!

Oh and we do have a Sata 3 Mobo around that could make full use of the c300!

If I can find a low cost controller that'll work it's got to be worth trying just to find out!

And as you say similar problems exist if using a SATA 2 mechanical drive!

[Pob255]

Interesting and slightly insane experiment, however I do think it's doomed to failier.

An ide to sata300 adapter would probably be the best and cheapest option, this still may not work as I'm not sure if that SSD requires any of sata features.
An adapter simply means you're converting it into an IDE drive (from the computers view point) you're not adding in a new sata controller.

There's no point just replaceing the motherboard, it's a Socket A board, so AFAIK there are no Socket A motherboards with Sata300 the best you'll find is the old nforce2 chip and that's only sata 150

[Funkstar]

The only think you will benefit from is access times, but that might be enough to make a difference.

I personally wouldn't use a SATA/IDE bridge adapter, I suspect the performance would suffer even more with that kind of setup.

[Brewster0101]

Interesting and slightly insane experiment, however I do think it's doomed to failier.

There's no point just replaceing the motherboard, it's a Socket A board, so AFAIK there are no Socket A motherboards with Sata300 the best you'll find is the old nforce2 chip and that's only sata 150

I think you are best to find a 2nd hand AM2+ motherboard and maybe an AM2 CPU like X2 from ebay and save yourself an awful lot of trouble. ( or an 775 motherboard and Dual core E2xxx series CPU)

[kalniel]

I think you are best to find a 2nd hand AM2+ motherboard and maybe an AM2 CPU like X2 from ebay and save yourself an awful lot of trouble. ( or an 775 motherboard and Dual core E2xxx series CPU)

It being 15 months later by now, he probably did.

[Hermann]

Never did get this working, decided against buying a load of kit just to see if it would work, lol.

SSD drive is happily in use with the sata 3 setup we already had, this was just 'wonder if it would work' thing!