[psychguy]

Hi all, I'm wanting to speed up the read (and write but mostly read) capability of my HD without getting RAID (just a poor student), will a PCI IDE controller speed things up at all?

Thanks for your time and help.

 

[cdoc8600]

The short answer is maybe. If you have an older hard drive that is rated as UDMA 66 or UDMA 33 than getting a new card will make no difference in speed unless you want to have it if you decide to upgrade to a new hard drive. If, however, you have a newer HD rated as ATA 100 or ATA 133 than having a new PCI controller card will significantly boost access and write speeds. You can get a dual channel ATA 100 PCI controller card through Startech.com for $45 or through one of their venders (ecost.com) for @ $26. Before you purchase anything, check the specs on your motherboard and hard drive. If it is a machine that is 1 year old or less, chances are that it is already rated at ATA 100. Hope this helped.

 

[johnwill]

First off, we'd need to know what MB you have. If you have a MB that supports ATA-100 at least, you'll see no measurable improvement in hard disk speeds. OTOH, if you have an older system, you might see a small improvement.

 

[x5dr]

and...if you have an older mobo you might find a better one for the same price as a controller card.