Windows 7 Arriving Today! So I joined. LOL

[SilverFox]

Just by luck I found this site. I have Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit coming today! So I joined up quick!

I custom build all my own PCs, but this will be the first 64 bit system on Windows 7 OS.

I have 6 hard drives, but only 4 SATA and 2 eSATA ports on my MB. Can you hook SATA drives into eSata ports?

I'm sure I will have plenty of questions, so thanks for all those who have gone before me.

 

[TorrentG]

Hey, welcome!

Offhand I can't tell you for a fact, but I'm sure there might be some form of adapter to use the eSata ports with SATA drives.
Or there's always add-on PCI controllers that can add storage ports.

So what are the specs of the new machine you'll be putting 64 bit on? Cool.

 

[TorrentG]

Quick search on Google found this:

http://www.officedepot.com/a/produc...cm_mmc=Mercent-_-NexTag-_-Networking-_-322170

So ya, there are adapters.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Can you hook SATA drives into eSata ports?

Yes you can, there are cables that are the L-shaped SATA connector on one end and the eSATA I-shaped connector on the other.

eBay is a good place to buy them as they are quite inexpensive there and in various lengths too.

 

[catilley1092]

SilverFox, welcome to the forum! Oh how I wished I had those extra eSATA ports on my MB! There may be the possibility that you can buy a hard drive case with an eSATA fitting built in. My Seagate backup drive case has such a fitting, do some checking around on Newegg, or eBay, you may find one. That way, all you'll need is the cable to plug from your MB to the drive case.

Nibiru is really good at finding these parts, he suggested one for me, but since I don't have an eSATA port to plug into, I use USB. That's OK for storage, backup, and running Linux, but no good for running Windows. I believe that if you can find the drive cases that you'll need, plus cables, you'll be in business. There is also an extender that you can plug in as many as five eSATA devices, C_C showed it to me.

I hope that this gives you some idea of what to look for, there will probably be other answers, as this thread goes forward. And that you'll find this forum to be a good place to learn, I've learned a lot since being here.

Best of Luck,
Cat

 

[Ian]

Welcome to the forums SilverFox ! You're going to enjoy W7 x64

 

[yodap]

Cat,

Oh how I wished I had those extra eSATA ports on my MB!

I think you confused the e-sata port with the sata port. I have never seen an e-sata port on the MB itself. The MB has sata ports only. The adaption takes place on the other end of the cable. The e-sata connector is a larger, more tight fitting connection to help keep the cable from pulling out as easy as a sata connection can come apart.

External drive adapters come with the device that lets you connect the e-sata adapter to the case where your pci cards are mounted. Some new cases come with built-in e-sata connectors on the front (like usb) or back of the case.

Silverfox, Welcome to the forum!

A hint while installing W7. Many of us have had better results when we have only the drive that will hold OS in the computer when you install. For some reason, W7 installs better when it only sees one drive. Good luck.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Another good tip is that there are PCI-E card with anywhere from 1 to 4 eSATA ports on the back of them. For people with lots to external storage hard drives this is another way to tackle the port problem.

I have heard this card work better at recognizing the external drives than the on-board motherboard SATA ports do. Better at the "hot plug n play".

The cards run anywhere from roughly $19.99 to $69.99, depending on the number of ports, whether they're RAID capable, etc.

From what I understand, the cards that have the Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset work the best. However I may be mistaken on that.

 

[TorrentG]

I have a PCI card that adds 4-port SATA-II support and a WD Caviar Black 1 TB running off of it. The card uses Silicon Images SI3124 chipset. The hilarious thing is with the company that made the card - when booting, it shows the screen for it with many words misspelled. lol

If you check my specs, it's worth noting that the Caviar Black is by far the fastest hdd on my system. (The other two drives are SATA-I attached to motherboard.)

 

[TrainableMan]

esata is an external sata connection (I-shaped connection instead of L-shaped) and would typically be available via the back of the case, most likely in a PCI slotted card. See Here

Could it be you meant the IDE connections? If so you would need something like THIS and two would not likely fit next to each other.

A better option is likely a PCI card that would actually have esata external and sata internal like THIS. (Please note this is just an example; I am not sure this particular card supports the latest SATA speeds - you need to check that it will provide your HDs with the best/fastest connections.)

 

[Nibiru2012]

From what I've researched, the PCI-E cards that use the newer smaller slots are a faster bus than the old 32-bit PCI cards with the longer card slots.

This is what I've seen in reviews at least. Makes sense though since the PCI-Express is a faster bus.

32-bit PCI card

PCI-Express Card

I going to research some more on this.

 

[Cypress]

As an aside, Esata looks like it will upgraded to 6GB/s so it will faster than USB 3.

 

[TrainableMan]

Ther second card Nibs showed may be perfect for your needs if you have a PCI-e (1x) slot available. The one I displayed as an example is not even rated for Windows 7, it was simply to give you the idea. The PCI card he is showing does not have 2 internal SATA connections which is what you need if you plan to have all 6 HDs inside.

 

[SilverFox]

Hey, welcome!

Offhand I can't tell you for a fact, but I'm sure there might be some form of adapter to use the eSata ports with SATA drives.
Or there's always add-on PCI controllers that can add storage ports.

So what are the specs of the new machine you'll be putting 64 bit on? Cool.

Actually, I just finished the build and Windows 7 64bit see all the drives including the ones plugged into the eSata ports. So I am using all 6 drives.

Yep, Windows 64 bit! I do video editing so I wanted to take full advantage of the 64 Bit platform. So far no issues and runs blazing fast with only 8GB of ram. I'll be adding another 8GB soon.

 

[SilverFox]

Well, Fried my 1394 port on my $1,400 dollar JVC deck hot plugging. Not good and not a cheap fix.

I wish my MB had on board 1394, but it doesn't. I'll have to go with PCIE 1394 card.

 

[TrainableMan]

I'm curious, what motherboard do you have? I would like to see what it looks like and I can probably find a photo if I knew the brand/model

 

[TorrentG]

Well, Fried my 1394 port on my $1,400 dollar JVC deck hot plugging. Not good and not a cheap fix.

I wish my MB had on board 1394, but it doesn't. I'll have to go with PCIE 1394 card.

Ouch, crossed the data and power lines by inserting the plug upside down, heh?

1394 was designed so that isn't supposed to happen. "Supposed to" is the key phrase here, obviously.

Very cool about video editing etc... I'm heavily into that myself.

The port isn't what actually fried. It's the 1394 chip, most likely made by TI.

Edit - Forgot to say congrats on the new gear, build and everything going well! So congrats!

 

[Kalario]

Ouch, crossed the data and power lines by inserting the plug upside down, heh?

1394 was designed so that isn't supposed to happen. "Supposed to" is the key phrase here, obviously.

Very cool about video editing etc... I'm heavily into that myself.

The port isn't what actually fried. It's the 1394 chip, most likely made by TI.

Edit - Forgot to say congrats on the new gear, build and everything going well! So congrats!

Just wondering what software you use for video editing, and is there a 'free' one you would recommend?

 

[Nibiru2012]

@ Silverfox -

So far no issues and runs blazing fast with only 8GB of ram. I'll be adding another 8GB soon.

Your current 8 GB of RAM is more than adequate to do everything you need to do, you'll just be wasting your money to be honest.

Tom's Hardware web site did a very thorough and concise article about how much RAM is really needed.


Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM? Read it and you'll see what I mean.

From the Conclusion Page of the article:

Not much has changed since 4 GB of RAM became the “sweet spot” for performance and price in the enthusiast market. While 32-bit operating systems previously limited those 4 GB configurations to around 3 GB of useful memory space, today's test shows that 3 GB is still usually enough.

We remember days when having multiple Internet Explorer windows open could cause a system to become sluggish. But even that scenario has become unrealistic, as all the configurations we tested in this review supported over 100 open windows simultaneously.

If 3 GB worked so well, why do we continue to recommend 4 GB to 6 GB triple-channel kits for performance systems? Perhaps we’re just a little too forward-looking, but we can certainly imagine scenarios a typical “power user” could encounter where 3 GB might not be enough, even if today’s tests didn’t reveal any of them. For those folks, stepping up to a 64-bit operating system at the same time is undoubtedly the best course of action.

We can only recommend larger capacities of 8 GB to 12 GB for professional applications where its usefulness has already been documented and for servers. None of our tests required high-memory capacities and wasted RAM is a burden both financially and ecologically.

 

[TorrentG]

Just wondering what software you use for video editing, and is there a 'free' one you would recommend?

Lots of different ones, depending on source format and also target format. Also, I always process audio separately, so to me, audio apps are part of "video" editing.

Mainly used:

TMPGEnc 2.5
VirtualDub Mod
Cyberlink MediaShow
Cubase 5
Sony Sound Forge 10
ffmpeg and ffmpegGUI (to encode .ac3)
tsMuxer
bbMPEG (AVI2MPG2) to multiplex DVD video/audio
AutoMKV
Adobe Premiere Pro (CS4 since I'm on 32 bit and CS5 is only for 64 bit)
DVDDecrypter
Goldwave
MPEG Video Wizard DVD 5.0 (Good to extract parts from pure DVD files)
Popcorn
TMPGEncDVDAuthor3
ffdshow
AVISynth
CDex with Lame (for .mp3 encoding)

Sometimes, I'll need to pull out a specialty app for a certain need or process impossible with using the above.