Sata controller question

massahwahl

massahwahl

VIP Member
My media server only has two sata ports on it and I want to drop a couple of terabyte hard drives inside but the motherboard will only read up to 500Gb. So if I get a sata controller will the computer be able to read terabyte hard drives from it? Other question is would it just be cheaper to buy external hard drives since what I've seen sata controllers are pretty pricy...
 
I'm guessing if the sata controller doesn't have any drive overlay feature like we used to have running windows 98 then the only thing you could do would be to partition the drive into smaller pieces.
 
why won't your motherboard see drives over 500GB?
i put a couple pci sata controllers on a pentium III motherboard and was able to add on three 1TB drives no problem.
there is something else going on there.

the first was a Rosewill 150 controller, then i 'upgraded' to a Promise 300 (sata II)

both were under $100, so they were not hardware raid. although i just used them to expand my mobo's capabilities and not to run raid.
 
I dont want raid on them, just want it for the expansion slots. The documentation for the precision 470 says it wont read over 500Gb... I thought it was weird too and wondered if I just made separate partitions if that would be enough. Regardless, I need the extra sata ports for more hard drives and a blu-ray player.
 
I would try the HDD before getting a SATA controller. The manufacturers have a bad tendency of understating abilities, or not using teh whole truth. Like HP says my G61 will only read 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD, and I am running 8GB and 1TB no problem without any other hardware changes.
 
I will def try it first, but Im going to need one anyway because the board only has 2 sata ports. I would like 1 for a blu ray drive UNLESS I could run a bl ray drive with a sata>pata adapter.
 
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