In this post I am going to write about the speed of hard drive controllers as it relates to data recovery.

I have noticed from my own experience that if you are using a data recovery software program in dos then the speed at which the hard drive can be scanned and recovered will be much faster if the hard drive you want recovered is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers on the motherboard.

This also includes data recovery programs that boot your computer from a CD without dos loaded. I have used data recovery programs that boot your computer from a CD without dos loaded and these data recovery programs have been faster at data recovery when the hard drive I wanted recovered was plugged into a hard drive controller built into a PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers built into the motherboard.

I think the reason for this is because the hard drive controllers on some PCI and PCI-Express hard drive controller cards are much faster than some of the hard drive controllers built into some motherboards. The reason could also be that you have a motherboard with older hard drive controllers built into it.

This is also true of data recovery programs run in the windows operating system. From my own experience data recovery programs run in the windows operating system will be able to scan and recover the files from the hard drive faster if the hard drive is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card instead of being plugged into one of the hard drive controllers built into your motherboard.

One other thing I have noticed is that a data recovery program used in the windows operating system should be able to scan and recover a hard drive faster than a data recovery program used in dos even if the hard drive you want to recover is plugged into one of the built in hard drive controllers on the motherboard. If the hard drive is plugged into a good quality PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card then the data recovery program for windows will be able to recover the hard drive faster than if the hard drive were plugged into one of the built in hard drive controllers on the motherboard.

Every PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card may not have faster hard drive controllers on it than the hard drive controllers built into your motherboard but for me I have noticed a good speed increase when using data recovery programs to recover data on hard drives that were plugged into any hard drive controllers on a PCI or PCI-Express hard drive controller card I have bought from Promise Technology.

Below is a link to the website for Promise Technology.

1.Promise Technology

I have always bought my PCI and PCI-Express cards from promise technology. If you know of any good company’s that offer good quality PCI and PCI-Express hard drive controller cards then leave a comment to let us and our blog readers know.

I have used Promise Technology hard drive controller cards for years and have had no problems with them.

If you have any other thoughts on this subject please leave a comment to this post.

For more information on hard disk controllers read the disk controller wikipedia article.

For information on How IDE Controllers Work see the HowStuffWorks.com How IDE Controllers Work article.