More then 2 SATA hard drives

[theboyfold]

If I only have 2 working SATA hard drives on my computer, how do I go about connecting a 3rd SATA hard drive? Am I right in thinking you can't 'daisy chain' SATA drives? I have a PCI to SATA adaptor, but this seems to slow the entire system down as I am assuming there is a bottle neck some where at the PCI to SATA bit?

Am I right or talking utter rubbish?!

[robbieduncan]

Serial ATA works on a 1 disk : 1 port basis. If your motherboard only has 2 ports then a PCI card is your only option for a "pure" SATA connection. This should not slow your system down. If it does the card has a problem in your system or the drivers are messed up. You can get PATA<->SATA convertors to allow you to either: use old drives on SATA connections or use SATA drives on old PATA controllers.

[Zad]

There shouldn't be a bottleneck on a PCI SATA adaptor. SATA (version 1 anyway) is "limited" to 150Mbit/s, and the PCI bus can handle approximately 1GBit/s. In reality, the transfer rate is limited by the bit density on the disk and the rotation speed rather than the electronics.

It may be that there is a driver conflict somewhere, it's worth checking on the manufacturer's web site to see if newer drivers are out. I would do some performance tests, copy a big file from each drive to another part of the same drive, and then across drives.