External SATA with 10k Raptor - £116 delivered!

Bro, does your rig even lift?
Post Reply
continuity-B
Posts: 295
Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 18:24
Location: Glasgow

External SATA with 10k Raptor - £116 delivered!

Post by continuity-B »

http://www.scan.co.uk

these item #s...

LN6925
LN5142
LN9496

(pcmcia SATA cardbus controller, 3.5" SATA-SATA enclosure and 37GB 10,000rpm Raptor)

Bigger drives are available of course

Not clear if it comes with cables (you need SATA and power cables too) but they are available.

Looks beastly to me. 150MBps (72MBps sustained)! - thats bytes, not bits folks!

pifco
Posts: 78
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:10
Location: Yorkshire

Help me out here continuity-b

Post by pifco »

What exactly is on offer here?
Is it an external SATA drive and some kind of adaptor for a laptop?
If that's the case then I want one.

but how do I set it up and what exactly, in layman's terms, do I need?

all help appreciated
pif

continuity-B
Posts: 295
Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 18:24
Location: Glasgow

Post by continuity-B »

It''s all fairly new and I'm deciphering the technobabble myself but as far as I know...

I know this is more than you're asking but I'll share what I know

SATA is a new drive connection standard (like IDE or SCSI) that allows potentially 150MBps transfer rate. FACT.

This drive standard was developed for servers as far as I know but has obvious benefit for anyone with high bandwidth requirements.

To connect these drives internally in adesktop requires a pci controller card although I presume some newer motherboards will support it.

To connect to a laptop externally you need a pcmcia(pccard) SATA controller which basically gives you the connection for your drive. There are some out the box ex-SATA drives (lacie's high end ones for example). Or better yet you can buy a blistering SATA drive like a Raptor and stick it in an SATA-SATA enclosure like I posted. Beware of SATA-USB or IDE-SATA etc enclosures as these are obviouslt limited to the slower connection type's transfer rate.

The greatest benefit is to be had connecting an ex-SATA to your laptop as this as far as I can see gives you effectively a full speed 'internal' drive connection - better than you've probably got in your dektop now.

Most pcmcia SATA cards have two ports so RAID is an option here too!

The advantage of an enclosure + drive over an 'out the box' external drive for me is choice of the actual disk inside (ie Raptor) and the ability to back up to several different hard drives which can then be removed and stored - a cheaper and longer lasting method than DVD backup byte for byte. Hence the reason I'm buying the smallest Raptor, as I plan on getting several over time increasing the redundancy of my content collection plus it's cheaper (kind of).

To answer your question, finally, yes! Like I said it's not clear if cabling and power supply (you will need one) come with the enclosure or card but they are available none the less for not too much.

pifco
Posts: 78
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:10
Location: Yorkshire

nice one

Post by pifco »

thanks, will give it a shot once I've got some time/cash

Anonymous

Post by Anonymous »

Have you actually got one of these and got one working? After some research i got a raptor and a sata-sata external enclosure and a sata pcmcia card. (before scan started doing this). Its to go with my new laptop - a custom built Rock. All the kit is less than 2 months old and while the laptop works perfectly i cant get the laptop to pick up the external drive. AFter much frustration and anoyance i decided to get another sata cardbus card with a different chipset. This also installs fine but i still cant see the ext drive! Been through all drivers etc / all combinations of setup - all the kit works and can get the setup to work on a crappy old acer but not my brand new rock laptop! The pcmcia slot is also working fine on my laptop (tested with other cards) so if anyone has any ideas?!!!! I contacted support from Rock and they couldnt work it out. Basically - still waiting to see how bad ass external sata drivers function from a laptop!!!

Easy

continuity-B
Posts: 295
Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 18:24
Location: Glasgow

Post by continuity-B »

If it works on the acer I suppose the problem must be with the rock somehow but I'm not expert enough...

I don't have one yet but scan explicitly state that's what the products are for on the site and don't mention anything special about compatibility. I'll definitely be going for it when I get spare cash.

pifco
Posts: 78
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:10
Location: Yorkshire

hmmm

Post by pifco »

I'm going to hold off for a while until some more results come back.
If you go for it, keep us posted eh?
piffer

Anonymous

Post by Anonymous »

Well i got my ext raptor and sata cardbus working after much frustration! Benchmarked it and got:

Write: 19.48 MB/s
Read: 57.37 MB/s

Pretty pleased as 57MB/s read is pretty good and so far tests have gone really well. It will play 2 layers at full pal pretty much flawlessly though 3rd layer causes it to jitter slightly. Will test it more at other resolutions when i have rendered out some clips at different sizes and checked frame rates as well. Hope this info is helpful!

Now... wonder what i could get out of 2 raptors is raid 0 ;)

Post Reply