Windows 7 Arriving Today! So I joined. LOL

From what I've researched, the PCI-E cards that use the newer smaller slots are a faster bus than the old 32-bit PCI cards with the longer card slots.

This is what I've seen in reviews at least. Makes sense though since the PCI-Express is a faster bus.

32-bit PCI card


PCI-Express Card


I going to research some more on this.

As an aside, Esata looks like it will upgraded to 6GB/s so it will faster than USB 3.

Ther second card Nibs showed may be perfect for your needs if you have a PCI-e (1x) slot available. The one I displayed as an example is not even rated for Windows 7, it was simply to give you the idea. The PCI card he is showing does not have 2 internal SATA connections which is what you need if you plan to have all 6 HDs inside.

Actually, I just finished the build and Windows 7 64bit see all the drives including the ones plugged into the eSata ports. So I am using all 6 drives.

Yep, Windows 64 bit! I do video editing so I wanted to take full advantage of the 64 Bit platform. So far no issues and runs blazing fast with only 8GB of ram. I'll be adding another 8GB soon.

Well, Fried my 1394 port on my $1,400 dollar JVC deck hot plugging. Not good and not a cheap fix.

I wish my MB had on board 1394, but it doesn't. I'll have to go with PCIE 1394 card.

I'm curious, what motherboard do you have? I would like to see what it looks like and I can probably find a photo if I knew the brand/model

Ouch, crossed the data and power lines by inserting the plug upside down, heh?

1394 was designed so that isn't supposed to happen. "Supposed to" is the key phrase here, obviously.

Very cool about video editing etc... I'm heavily into that myself.

The port isn't what actually fried. It's the 1394 chip, most likely made by TI.

Edit - Forgot to say congrats on the new gear, build and everything going well! So congrats!

Just wondering what software you use for video editing, and is there a 'free' one you would recommend?

@ Silverfox -Your current 8 GB of RAM is more than adequate to do everything you need to do, you'll just be wasting your money to be honest.

Tom's Hardware web site did a very thorough and concise article about how much RAM is really needed.


Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM? Read it and you'll see what I mean.

From the Conclusion Page of the article:

Lots of different ones, depending on source format and also target format. Also, I always process audio separately, so to me, audio apps are part of "video" editing.

Mainly used:

TMPGEnc 2.5
VirtualDub Mod
Cyberlink MediaShow
Cubase 5
Sony Sound Forge 10
ffmpeg and ffmpegGUI (to encode .ac3)
tsMuxer
bbMPEG (AVI2MPG2) to multiplex DVD video/audio
AutoMKV
Adobe Premiere Pro (CS4 since I'm on 32 bit and CS5 is only for 64 bit)
DVDDecrypter
Goldwave
MPEG Video Wizard DVD 5.0 (Good to extract parts from pure DVD files)
Popcorn
TMPGEncDVDAuthor3
ffdshow
AVISynth
CDex with Lame (for .mp3 encoding)

Sometimes, I'll need to pull out a specialty app for a certain need or process impossible with using the above.