HDD/SSD Controllers

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD)/Solid State Drive (SSD) controllers are pieces of computer hardware that connect directly to the motherboard allowing you to add more HDDs/SSDs to your system by hooking them up via the controller. This can be for a number of reasons such as increasing the storage size, drive mirroring or for hot-swapping where a drive can be removed without powering the system down. The controller features its own processor which allows you to bypass the motherboard's own limitations on controlling storage drives. Some controllers allow the use of RAID (redundant array of independent disks) features that provide either higher speeds or more reliability.

HBA (Host Bus Adapters)

A Host Bus Adapter (HBA) is an expansion card that plugs into a PCIe slot on the motherboard and provides fast, reliable non-RAID communication between the host system and the storage devices.

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IDE/SATA I/SCSI

A simple disk array controller may be integrated with a host bus adapter (HBA) to form a single adapter to easily fit inside a computer. These additional add-in cards allow you to add more IDE or Serial ATA drives to your system to give you more storage capacity. Some of these cards also allow the use of RAID thus increasing the performance and data security.

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