Re: Considering new SATA PCIe card

[Mateusz <mateusz-lists@ant.gliwice.pl>]

On środa, 25 listopada 2020 03:20:20 CET Alex wrote:
> (...) server with 4x4TB 7200 SATA disks in
> RAID5 (...)  motherboard has two
> SATA-6 ports on it and the others are SATA3.
> 
> Would there really be any benefit to purchasing a new controller such
> as this for it instead of the onboard for the 4x4TB disks?

I doubt it, unless your MB HW/driver is broken, as usual max transfer rate of 
7200 HDD is  around 150MB  and SATA 2.0 ( 3 Gbit/s ) limit is 300MB
Check current HW performance by sth like:
iostat -x 3 -m
and verify if you are close to expected HDD values under real load/test 
stress.

> I'm also curious if the SATA cables have improved over time, or are
> the same cables I purchased five years ago just as good today?

If controller works in SATA-300 mode on all ports already, you will not get 
any benefit from newer (SATA-600) cables neither.

Regards,

-- 
Mateusz 
(...) mam brata - poważny, domator, liczykrupa, hipokryta, pobożniś,
	krótko mówiąc - podpora społeczeństwa."
		Nikos Kazantzakis - "Grek Zorba"