SATA Port Multiplier technology... Clear up a few things for me?

[The Grim Ninja]

The technical info I've read up about PM tech is kinda vague.. Says that is supports RAID Mirroring, RAID 5, JBOD... Does it support not being setup as a RAID?

Can I get a SATA controller card with PM capabilities, hook up a port multiplier bridgeboard, then attach 5 SATA drives, and have every one of those devices mount to my desktop individually? Or does it have to show up as a single device for the PM magic to work?


I just bought a huge external drive enclosure free of any interfaces. I'd like to use IDE, USB, and SATA to connect it to my G4. (I wish to use it in many different ways). I can't afford 5 SATA drives right now, but I would like to use the port multiplier tech to increase storage as I go without a lot of headaches. Is it right for me?

Thanks

[The Grim Ninja]

I guess I'm not the only one? Is the spec really that vague?


The case I bought is 9 bay. I was thinking it would be pretty awesome to have 5 SATA hard drives in removable drive racks in the lower bays, then have 4 IDE DVD-RW drives in the upper bays connected via Firewire.

I found this device: http://www.cooldrives.com/cooldrives/ufsatofibrbo.html
Which would allow let me plug into the firewire port and give me two SATA Ports, one of which could be fed through a Port Multiplier to give me 5 SATA ports (Plus the other on the FW->SATA bridge). But, would those 5 ports work as though they were independent, or only in a RAID setup?

From the FW->SATA bridge, I'd go to either a pair of FW->IDE dual drive bridgeboards, or just to a single quad drive bridgeboard.

Obviously this setup would be expensive, and would take a long while to afford to create, but I would like to have some idea about where to start with it.

[mattkime]

I think it depends upon the host card you get.

[mattkime]

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BRZ/is_2_25/ai_n13787815

[The Grim Ninja]

I've been looking at many different sites and so far, I've only seen one that seems to say that the drives are independent on a shared link. That's exactly what I want.

I'd like to find maybe 2 more articles or specs that say the same before I count on it. A $90 FW->SATA adapter is a bit expensive to buy when it would only connect to two drives. But to add a $90 adapter and be able to attach 5 drives plus have an external SATA port too, that wouldn't be so bad.


I'm not that worried about bandwidth, a single SATA II port would have plenty so long as I'm not doing transfers to all the drives.