Windows 7: Decent Hadware Disk controller card

Hi all

Running a number of VM's I notice the whole machine is getting bogged down sometimes because I'm running a few SATA drives directly from the Mobo.

I should really run these from a separate controller -- I don't really need a RAID / SCSI controller but just a fast SATA controller that could take up to 4 HDD's.

The MOBO I'm using for this machine only has 2 spare PCI card slots and I'm already using one for a DVB-T TV card.

In the new year it's "New machine" building time again - but at the moment if I can just move some HDD's off the MOBO on to a separate decent controller that would be just fine.

Splitting the I/O paths by using a controller would improve the system no end.

CPU is a QUAD core , plenty of RAM so I know it's the I/O that's a bottleneck.

I've googled a bit and all the posts on disk controller cards seem to be either expensive RAID one's or posts from around the year 2005 -- I'm sure (in fact I KNOW) disk technology has improved considerably since then.
Any ideas.

Cheers
jimbo.

I'm using a SATA-II PCI software RAID card made by Syba. Despite the errors in spelling and other stuff at system post, it seems to carry on fairly well with my Caviar Black 1TB.

You can flash it to be RAID or non-RAID controller and there is a driver available for each mode.

Hi therfe
thanks for the suggestion but that card is VERY slow. I'd like something that would do SATA II speed if poss.

Cheers
jimbo