Computing - Silicon Image 3112A SATA Controller
Information on attaching Parallel IDE
Devices to a SATA Controller
Over the next few years we will be moving away
from parallel IDE devices and moving over to a new standard
which will give us a much needed increase in speed and
performance. This new standard is known as SATA or Serial-ATA.
Many motherboard manufacturers have started to
add SATA controllers to their motherboards, these are useful if
you are also planning on purchasing some new SATA devices to go
with them, however what if you've still got some perfectly good
standard IDE devices but would still like to utilise these
controllers and the much smaller internal cables?
The answer is to use a converter or "bridge"
that enables you to attach standard IDE devices to a SATA
controller. The first thing you need to know is that each SATA
channel can only control a single device, no more Master/Slave
settings on devices.
Attaching a standard IDE Hard Drive to a
SATA controller
The first thing you must do when attaching a
standard IDE hard drive to a SATA controller is set the device
to "Cable Select". It is very tempting to set the device as
"Master" of "Single Drive" however the SATA controller will not
be able to find your hard drive if you do this, setting the
device to "Slave" is also incorrect.
One of the new features of SATA controllers is
the ability to "hot swap" devices, in a RAID array the ability
to replace a failed device can be extremely useful, but will you
have this new ability if you attach a standard IDE device to a
SATA controller using a converter/bridge? I asked Silicon Image
this question with regards to the 3112A SATA controller, their
answer was as follows:
"If you use a SATA-IDE bridge converter,
you will have the same hot plug capability as you would with a
native SATA drive. However, you may not be able to achieve the
full bandwidth of SATA with an older IDE drive"
So yes, you will have this new feature. A lot
of new motherboards contain this Silicon Image SATA controller
which supports RAID 0 & 1 arrays. If you decide to use a RAID1
(mirror) configuration you would be able to replace a failed HD
without first powering the system down, very useful for mission
critical machines.
Attaching ATAPI (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW)
devices to a SATA controller
SATA controllers also support ATAPI devices.
ATAPI devices are slow in comparison the devices such as hard
drives, however the ability to use those small SATA cables in a
machine rather than large ribbon cables is extremely appealing.
Once again I asked Silicon Image about the
ability to attach DVD-ROM & CD-RW devices to a SATA controller
using a converter/bridge, their response was as follows:
"If you use a SATA-IDE bridge using our
SiI3611 chip, you will be able to connect to our SiI3112A since
the 3611 has ATAPI support. Not all SATA-IDE bridges have ATAPI
support. If it does not have ATAPI support, the bridge will not
work with CDROMs, DVD drives, etc"
What we have learnt here is that attaching
ATAPI devices to a SATA controller via a converter or bridge is
possible, however there is a catch. Not only does the SATA
controller itself have to support ATAPI devices, the
converter/bridge also needs to support such devices.
Silicon Image mention their own 3611 chip
which is used on various bridges/converters that do support
ATAPI devices, as there is a difference and a need to support
this standard I am guessing that not all bridges will support
ATAPI devices. Before making your converter/bridge purchase you
may want to check to see if it contains the Silicon Image 3611
chip, if not find out what is being used and check for ATAPI
compatibility before purchase.
It is highly unlikely you'll do either the
SATA controller or ATAPI device any damage by using a non-ATAPI
compatible bridge, what is most likely is that the controller
will simply fail to see the device.
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