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Vantec™ SATA PCI Host Adapter

     SATA is quickly becoming a new standard in Hard Drives, and is slowly being adopted by optical drive manufacturers as well. Capable of transferring data up to 150MBps, it has many advantages over Parallel ATA. However, PATA isn’t dead yet with up to 133MBps max transfer rate. However, it looks as if PATA will soon be phased out. Today we will be looking at the SATA PCI Host Adapter that Vantec has been kind enough to send over for review. Let's check it out.

Product Description:

     Serial ATA (SATA) is the latest form of computer connectivity, featuring faster transfer speeds, easier configuration, and the ability to hot swap drives. Perhaps the best feature is that it does so without being as expensive as SCSI drives. The Vantec SATA PCI Card is an affordable way to add the benefits of SATA to your current system, or add an additional SATA device. The Vantec SATA PCI card also features an external SATA connector as well, allowing you to connect external SATA devices for further expandability.

Features:

• Up to 3 times faster than USB 2.0.

• Easily hot-swap SATA devices.

• Internal and external Serial ATA ports (1 each)

• Easy Installation

• Includes Low Profile PCI bracket

Specifications:

• Fully Serial ATA 1.0a Compliant

• Supports High-Speed Transfer Rates Up To 1.5Gbps

• Supports Spread Spectrum in Receiver

• Provides 32 bit, 33/66MHz PCI Host Interface

• Compliant with PCI Rev. 2.2 Specifications

• Integrated PCI DMA engines

• Compatible with Windows 98SE/ME/NT4.0/2000/XP

• Controller Chip: Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATALink Controller

Package Includes:

• SATA Driver Disk

• Manual

• SATA PCI Card

• Low Profile Bracket

• Standard Profile Bracket

Hot-Swapping:

     Hot swapping is a feature that was designed into the SATA standard, and a very welcome feature it is. The easiest, clearest way for me to explain hot swapping is to point you to the definition from Whatis.com:

     "A hot swap is the replacement of a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, power supply, or other device with a similar device while the computer system using it remains in operation. The replacement can be because of a device failure or, for storage devices, to substitute other data."

     I used the Vantec SATA EZ swap drive kit from a previous review to test the hot swapping abilities. When I proceeded to pull the drive out, my system locked up for a brief second, and then resumed on its tasks. The locking up is caused by the OS not knowing what is about to happen. This will not happen in server-class operating systems due to them being programmed and designed to predict that this will happen. Once of the many items that should be at least added to XP Pro is support for hot swapping without scaring someone. All that is needed to take advantage of the hot swap abilities of the card is to pull the drive out and replace the drive if choosing to do so. No other is configuration needed.

Performance:

For testing the performance of the card, I used Simpli Software’s HDTach. The program may be downloaded from Simpli Software’s website free of charge for home/non-commercial use.

     The drives being used are a Western Digital WD800JB and a Western Digital WD800JD. Both drives are 7200RPM and each contains 8MB cache. The JB denotes special edition PATA while the JD denotes special edition with a native SATA interface.

Test system:

• AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• 512MB Micron RAM
• MSI K8T Neo FIS2R
• WD800JB
• WD800JD

WD800JB on VIA PATA controller:

• Random access: 13.3ms
• CPU utilization: 4% (± 2%)
• Average read: 41.2MBps/329.6Mbps
• Burst speed:90.8MBps/726.4Mbps

WD800JD on Vantec SATA PCI Host Card:

• Random access: 13.9ms
• CPU utilization: 5% (± 2%)
• Average read: 51.7MBps/413.6Mbps
• Burst speed: 110.3MBps/882.4Mbps

*Lower is better for CPU and random access.*

*Higher is better for average read.*

     As can be seen by the benchmark, the PATA drive had a lower random access time and less CPU utilization. The device attached to the SATA card from Vantec performed better, although marginally, with the exception of the random access time.

Conclusion:

     While the Vantec SATA host card didn’t perform to it's 150Mbps max transfer rate, none the less it is still a great product. You don’t see external SATA ports on motherboards, and until this comes around, we will have to settle for either running a cable from inside of your PC through an empty PCI slot to the outside, or cards such as the one provided by Vantec. External SATA devices are quickly growing, and aren’t going to stop.

     At $29.99 MSRP, you have to ask yourself if it is worth it to only be able to connect one SATA device internally, and one externally. If you only have one SATA device and don’t have native serial ATA support on your motherboard, and are just wanting to check out what SATA is all about, then the Vantec™ SATA PCI Host Card is a decent upgrade. You may want to consider opting for an expansion card that supports at least two internal ports. The single external port is plenty, as many don’t have more than one external HDD.