PCIE for sata with raid?

[le7k]

I have a Dell XPS 8300 that came with 2 HD's in a raid0. I would like to add 2 external hard drives to supplement (for video editing). There is a esata port - I would like to buy a PCI Express E-Sata adapter so I can run another hard drive.

Do I need the adapter to be a raid adaptor or can it be non-raid (because this hd will not be raid anyway)

Is there anything else I may be missing on this?

thanks very much!

 

[sminlal]

The adapter doesn't have to be RAID, but you'll probably find that most of the PCIe plug-in SATA/eSATA cards are advertised as "RAID" adapters. This is because there's basically no extra cost to the manufacturer (it's just software) and it lets them claim a more feature-rich product. But even though it's advertised as a "RAID" adapter it doesn't mean you have to use it as such.

If you're looking to connect external drives then make sure the adapter you buy actually has external ports that are accessible through it's back plate. A lot of SATA adapters have internal ports only.

You might consider using USB 3.0 for your external drives. It performs as well as SATA, allows you to use longer cables, and a USB 3.0 drive can be plugged into virtually any computer in the world in case you need to transport your data somewhere or your main system dies and you need to recover data from it.