I plan on buying/building a good strong computer but have now spent all I can for a while on HF-S100, Adobe CS4 suite, and other assorted goodies. I have a Core 2 duo (Dell) that won't allow me to install a third Sata drive. My 2nd drive, BTW, is very full and dedicated to music creation so I can't implement it in the work flow. My plan for now is to use a firewire drive for video files and use Neoscene in Premier. I know it will be clunky, but will it work???

Firewire will work but it might work even better if you use the internal drive for video and the external drive for music.

It's not worth the trouble. It has 140 gigs of samples some of which are awful to load. Besides, my music apps wouldn't work without those samples being on fast Sata drive. It will be maybe 4 months before I get a new computer. Also I'm kind of waiting to see what happens with Windows 7.

David,

I don't understand why you can't add a third SATA drive internally. Is there no physical room? It there no SATA port on the mobo? Or is the SATA port not enabled in the BIOS?

Harm,

It's a Dell 530 Inspirion, small case, only 2 internal bays and I don't believe this E6550 and Mobo allows for any external Sata.

I am in the same boat with regards to Windows 7. I am more concerned when all the video/music apps will work without a hitch (or no worse than they do on Vista 64) before moving to Windows 7 tho.

Dave, if you have a PCI slot (or PCI-E), you can add an E-sata port to your computer and use external via sata speeds.

I'm running XP SP2. Haven't even gone to Vista.
I didn't know about PCI card for Sata drives. Thanks. I'll check it out.

Harm,

It's a Dell 530 Inspirion, small case, only 2 internal bays and I don't believe this E6550 and Mobo allows for any external Sata.

Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense when there is no physical internal room. What you may try is using an external SATA disk connected to an on-board SATA conector, if you have that available on the mobo.

Harm,

I disconnected my computer, took off the side panel and spent some time getting familiar with what's inside. The insides are no longer a black hole. So, I can answer your question. There are only 2 Sata connectors. It has 2 PCI (one available) slots and 1 PCIe slot (graphics card). So, I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow and get a PCI Sata card. I ordered a LaCie 1TB eSata drive. Am I doing it right?


I ordered this card
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-130823-eSATA-Design-Sismo/dp/B001MWHI0U/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1247805087&sr=8-4

Looks good David. There has been a time that LaCie got a reletively bad reputation, but that was caused by the fact that they used Seagate drives and Seagate had serious reliability problems. Seagate has regained control over the quality problems, so that should not be a problem any longer. Lately I have not heard about problems with LaCie drives.

Harm,

It turns out that on the MoBo of my Dell 530 there are 4 Sata sockets. The case is such that 2 were for drives and 2 were for DVD/CD bays.

My question is:

1. Is there any difference between these sockets or could I use 3 for drives and the remaining one for the LG Blu-Ray I have installed now?

2. Would the MoBo Sata socket have a higher data transfer rate than if I went with the PCI eSata card?

David,

I don't think that there is any difference between the 4 SATA connectors. My guess is that they all use the same IHC(R) chip, but the technical scheme of the board layout will give that info. However, Dell usually does not include that in the documentation.

So your approach of using 3 SATA's for your 3 disks and the 4-th one for your optical drive makes a lot of sense. You can also use the eSATA connectors on the PCI-e card you ordered and will not notice any speed difference. The bandwidth of the PCI-e bus in far higher than any disk can achieve.

The bandwidth of the PCI-e bus in far higher than any disk can achieve.

My last available card slot is PCI. I think they're still rated for 150Mbs though. And the 4 Sata sockets on the MoBo are all grouped together so I assume they're running through the same circuitry.

BTW, I was considering upgrading to an E8400 until I checked out TomsHardware charts. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CS4,Marque_fbrandx14,1404.html
I should just live with the current set-up until I buy/build an i7 920 computer.

Thanks a lot Harm. You've really been a help!