? about Abit IC7-G and the Serillel tech..

[Ir192]

? about Abit IC7-G and the Serillel 2 tech..

I recently upgraded my HD to a 74gig Raptor this weekend and while I was installing windows I got to sifting through my IC7-G max II box and low and behold what did I find...a Serillel 2 adapter. I thought to myself, "Self, what the heck is this thingy?!?!"

So I proceded to read on the website about the adapter and how it will convert an IDE hard disk to a SATA interface. So that seemed pretty cool to me as I could use the space, and the airflow.

Has anyone had any expereince using this little gadget. I have a IDE hard drive that has my music/pictures/downloaded files on it and I would like to be able to use this little adapter so I don't have to put in my rounded IDE cables again, plus I read there is a "slight" performance increase.

My question is though, after reading a little more, it seems that you must use the Silicon Image Controller, and I have already installed my Raptor using the Intel southbridge controller. Do I have to reinstall windows and use the SI driver at the portion of setup where it prompts you to hit F6 to install the SATA controllers, or will I be able to just unplug my raptor and plug it into the SI controller? Also in the diagram it mentions that I need to set the jumper on the hard disk to the "master" position and of course, I want my Raptor to be my master, Windows and program files partitions. I just want to use this as a storage device. Maybe I should email Abit tech support about this, but just thought I would post up here and see what you all had to say about the issue.

Any questions/comments on this gadget would be greatly appreciated!

 

[massraptor]

Yes Unfortunaley

You will have to reinstall windows with the silicon image drivers off of the floppy supplied with the motherboard.The Silicon Image Controller is only about 10% faster than the Intel soultion SATA controller.If you feel the Raptor is fast enough for you and just want to add the secondary drive to the Intel controller ,it will work without any problems.I have also used the Abit IDE to SATA adapter on my wifes Gigabyte board and it worked fine.Getting her the same drive you have gotta get her going faster .Good luck on you're choice.

Remeber boys amd girls fold You're life could depend on it

 

[MensaBoy]

from what ive read the intel sata controller is faster than the SI one, and the SI controller is also limited by the PCI bandwidth, so it would be unwise to put a Raptor SATA drive on the SI controller, and make sense to put the IDE drive with the gadget on the SI controller

just enable the SI in BIOS, and install the drivers, plug in the gadget and done, you can even do this with your boot drive if you wish, after instalation, it works the same, once the drivers are installed for the controller, the drive will boot off it

im tryin to find the article/review that spoke about the sifference in the controllers bandwidth, i will post when i find it

 

[MensaBoy]

found some info, the SI chip is limited to the PCI bus, 133MB/sec, and the Intel runs on the southbridge with a bandwidth of 266MB/sec

so with a single SATA drive and not much more PCI bandwidth used by other cards, they would both do well, when the PCI bus starts getting used heavily and/or with a dual drive SATA srtipe, then your going to be hitting the wall with the SI controller

 

[massraptor]

You are right

Mensaboy at first i was roasting that you would even suggest that th SI was slower than the Intel Then i went and did some research and found the same thing that you very well might be right .So if hes considering using the secondary hard drive with the Serillel adapter on the Intel SATA it will work fine as long as the drive is recognized in the bios.

Remeber boys and girls fold You're life could depend on it

MassRaptor

 

[MensaBoy]

Mensaboy at first i was roasting that you would even suggest that th SI was slower than the Intel Then i went and did some research and found the same thing that you very well might be right .So if hes considering using the secondary hard drive with the Serillel adapter on the Intel SATA it will work fine as long as the drive is recognized in the bios.

i would think that at the most basic level, the SI controller may actually be faster, as it has the cabability of 66mhz-266MB/s bus connectivity, its the Abit mobo in this case which precludes that

however, all things being equal, i would still opt for the Intel as their RAID controller have always been of the most stable and compatible solutions

but i still beleive he should reserve the Intel on-chip adapter for his raptor, and use the SI chip for the IDE with the Serillel, as the drive will not push the available bandwidth of the PCI bus anyway

also i would be wary of the Intel chip "throttling" to meet the slower IDE drive, this is just pure speculation, but i beleive it to be a possible concern

 

[massraptor]

Disagree to a point

And here is why i think this.This is only the first revision to SATA thus 150mb/s MAX burst.That given the controller would see the standard drive as a SATA I drive even with slower access speed and throughput rate.The controller is not going to care and will run them seperately on the chip just like two diffrent IDE channels.

MassRaptor

 

[MensaBoy]

yeah, i wasnt really saying it would do that, only tossing it out there for discussion

i do know that if you put a 33mhz PCI card in a slot with a 66mhz card, the bus (64 bit in this case) runs at the lower 33mhz speed, crippling the higher speed card

course i could just rearrange some of my sata cables and find out that it doesnt do that, but then what would we have to yak about

 

[Ir192]

Thank you both for your input. I tried it install my IDE 40gig Caviar with the Serillel 2 adapter gadget on my 2nd SATA input on the Intel controller, but I couldn't get it recognized. I will install my SIS contoller tonight and see about plugging it into that contorller and see if I can get my storage IDE recognized. When more cash comes available in the future, I will obviously upgrade this storage drive to a larger 200ish gig SATA drive, but at the moment the bank account simply won't allow it. And I would like to access some of the files of different programs that I have stored on the Caviar. I never could figure out why I couldn't get the IDE recognized on the Intel controller. I tried different jumper settings like slave, cable controlled, and even master and just seemed I couldn't get it to work.

Anyways, like I said. Thanks again for your input and I will try it tonight or sometime tomorrow and let you know how it works out back here on this post.

 

[MensaBoy]

I never could figure out why I couldn't get the IDE recognized on the Intel controller. I tried different jumper settings like slave, cable controlled, and even master and just seemed I couldn't get it to work.

i never tried it on the Intel controller, because i had the 2-drive sata stripe already on that one

 

[Ir192]

Thanks again. Looks like tonight will be a night of fooling around and seeing what I can possibly get to work. At least, at this point..., I won't have to re-install Windows, AGAIN. Sheesh, I hate doing that. I will just install the SIS controller and give it a shot to see if it will recognized my drives. I didn't get a chance to mess with it last night because it was my "Fiance" time that I was required to spend since I had been out of town all last week for buisness... I don't get it, I would have been in the same room with her and talking to her....LOL oh well