[G4] SIIG tech support (vapor support?); SATA, SATA II

[Wayne Clodfelter]

I've been hearing about SATA for a while now, how it's supposed to be  
better and faster than Ultra Super Colossal (pick one) ATA. And now  
SATA II is arriving. Does that mean I bought my SATA PCI card and two  
Seagate SATA 250MB drives too late, and should have bought/waited for  
SATA II?
I'm surprised there hasn't been much/any mention of SATA on any of  
the lem lists to which I subscribe.
Regarding SIIG tech support, the SATA card I have is a SIIG 4-channel  
PCI -M (for Mac), purchased from newegg.com. I liked the fact that it  
will handle 4 drives, saving a PCI slot and the purchase price of a  
second 2-channel card if I choose to go beyond 2 drives.

My questions to SIIG tech-support, simply, were these:
Will the IO for the drives be faster/higher throughput with the one 4- 
channel PCI card in my G4 QuickSilver--64-bit 33 MHz PCI bus--or with  
two 2-channel PCI cards?
Will the 4-channel PCI card simultaneously read from one drive on the  
card and write to another drive on the card at optimum speed, or will  
the read/write be slowed because two drives are being accessed at the  
same time?
Perhaps these are dumb questions to some of you, but they are not  
dumb to me, and nowhere on SIIG's web site or in-box documentation  
(poor) do I see answers to these questions).
SIIG's tech support response was "what do you mean by optimum speed/ 
throughput?"
I view this as a non-answer rather than an answer. A non-help rather  
than a help.

Is anybody on this list using SATA? SATA II?
Are all SATA and SATA II cards created equal in terms of IO speed/ 
throughput/bandwidth (whatever you want to call it)?
What cards are you using and where did you get them?
SATA II users, what speeds/throughputs are you actually seeing? Are  
you using Hitachi drives or other?

I am ready to be enlightened. Thanks.

Regards,

Wayne Clodfelter
wayne at troutnc.com