SATA3 Add-in Card

[Fishstick]

I bought a Samsung 840 Pro but my mother board does not have SATA 3 ports. I bought a SIIG add-in card for $25 (USD) and I get additional speeds but not the speed the drive promises. ( I get ~395 MB/s sequential reads and writes but the drive claims 540 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. )

Are those numbers absolute best results? Are my speeds within normal range or is the card limiting speed.

Another issue I have is during boot. The card detects connected drives every time I boot the machine after the POST and then goes back to the BOIS splash screen before continuing. Then once booted into Windows, the start-up process hangs for a while before playing the Windows logo animation. This was not a problem when connected to the SATA2 ports on the motherboard.

Any help or additional information about SATA3 add-in cards would be welcome as well.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Unfortunately there is no way of getting around the issue of speed unless you opt for professional level equipment. Cheap SATA 3 cards will not deliver, and I believe some say they're not meant to be used for SSDs. You really should have a newer generation motherboard if you want to take full advantage of an SSD. Regardless you will get much better speeds than a hard drive even if you use a SATA 2 port.

As for the startup issues, those cards are also not

[Guest]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say AHCI mode vs IDE mode? Don't quite understand the way the card would interact with the BIOS but it's worth a shot. As for your second problem, it's probably just because you're running the boot drive from a PCI Slot and I'm going to go out on an even further limb and say the PCI slots are further down the computers list of 'to-do's' when starting up. However I can't for the life of me figure out your post boot issue.

[Fishstick]

I suppose its just limitations of the add-in card. The boot up time increase isn't not problem really. I still boot in about 50 seconds. The SSD is still very fast and I will have it for quite some time. I have a 1366 processor and I don't think upgrading just the motherboard is worth it.

And I will just disregard the fact that Windows gives me the option to eject the SSD.

[Rhizo]

520mb/s is theoretical, your speeds are fine. Just make sure you are running in AHCI mode.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Unfortunately there is no way of getting around the issue of speed unless you opt for professional level equipment. Cheap SATA 3 cards will not deliver, and I believe some say they're not meant to be used for SSDs. You really should have a newer generation motherboard if you want to take full advantage of an SSD. Regardless you will get much better speeds than a hard drive even if you use a SATA 2 port.

As for the startup issues, those cards are also not

It is not the best solution, but it will still be way faster than a HDD. Plus you can re-use it in a future build at full speed. Don't get a SATA 2 ssd, they're very expensive compared to SATA 3 version. So yes, get one.