The wiki says SATA drives are a problem for mythboxes. Is this still the case? Are they fast enough to handle HDTV?

I am asking because I am planning to build a new machine, and motherboards with IDE interfaces, will still available, are getting harder to find, and it will limit my choices.

SATA are not a problem any longer (not since the D series, from memory).

They're much faster than IDE (PATA) drives and better suited to HDTV.

However, you should avoid SATA DVD drives, IMO. I haven't yet found one that is acceptable. Either they won't read CDs, burned DVDs, or they simply don't burn properly. Not sure why but I've had a lot of problems with three different brands (Pioneer, Asus, LG).

Regards

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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Be sure to research your planned motherboard and drive first.

Most standard SATA controllers and drives "just work" with KM these days, but there are certain motherboards and drives that have issues. Some of these are BIOS fixable, and others aren't. Caveat emptor!

Oh I know. I have a Si3112 RAID based motherboard in my desktop that has convinced me to never buy that raid controller chip again. A real horrible BIOS kludge actually stopped it corrupting file systems, but it's not nice.

I must investigate, as I don't know what a D-series is yet But that's good info, and thanks for the tip about DVD's as I was wondering whether to use a SATA optical drive or not.

D series of KM releases, As in, "R5Dx". We're currently on the F series. http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13537

The Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA II drive that I have in my M2NPV-VM PC is very fast and quiet, no problems at all with build or running day-to-day. Using R5F1.

I didn't realise you were after a recommendation .

Both mythic.tv (Human's business) in the U.S. and better-access.com in Australia (that's me) use Western Digital RE2 series server drives for Dragons, and they're thus the reference drives. They have a 5 year warranty and are very quiet.

I've used several drives and they all work perfectly. The only difference is things like warranty and noise. One common brand (can't recall, ATM, which is probably good) has no noise reduction technology at all, so I'd avoid that. The last thing you want is for your machine to be buzzing audibly in your lounge: Very low WAF (wife approval factor).

Ciao

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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It seems from previous posts that ANY drive/SATA card will work, but some don't.

I am ordering a new drive and card, but the reviews on NewEgg aren't giving me that warm fuzzy feeling- and they don't talk about linux. I haven't been able to find any specific cards here.

While I look around, I am looking for recommendations on a card that has at least 1-2 SATA channels so I don't have to return it.


Thanks!


Jason

Where is R5.5 at with AHCI support for SATA drives? Anyone successfully using their SATA drive with it enabled? If so, which MB?

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.