SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA?

>
>
> Unless you're talking a 10,000 rpm drive, the speed difference will be
> insignificant. It doesn't matter how fast you can transfer data
> unless the majority of the data is already in the cache. I'd buy sata
> just to reduce the cable clutter, and probably will when my ide drive
> quits, but not before.
>

Even a 10K RPM drive can't read/write data fast enough to overwhelm a IDE100
speed data connection. So SATA will not make a drive faster, all by itself.
As for buying SATA to reduce cable clutter, I'm not sure that's such a good
idea.

My buddy bought a brand new HP media center PC recently. I helped him
upgrade the power supply so that he could upgrade the video card (long story
boils down to HP engineers thought it would be a GOOD idea to match a
PCI-Express-INcompatible power supply with a PCI-Express capable mainboard)

Anyway, while replacing the power supply, I had to snip a plastic wire tie
(zip tie) to get one of the power connectors off of a SATA hard drive. I
thought that HP was just being overly careful in securing the power
connection. BUT, when I went to connect the new power supply to that SATA
hard drive, I realized that there was NOTHING holding the SATA power
connector to the hard drive. The electrical contacts on the power connector
were just SITTING on the electrical contacts on the hard drive. This was a
brand new OCZ brand (extremely high quality) power supply, so it wasn't like
the connector was a cheapie or anything.

I remember thinking, I'm not impressed at all with this SATA stuff. I had
to dig up some zip ties and kind of worm them in/around some circuit cards
so that I would have some way to secure the power connector for the SATA
hard drive. That wasn't easy, as the drive bays were on rails, so I had to
route zip ties THROUGH components, rather than around them. (or else the
drives wouldn't fit back in the case)

Basically, I think you're better off buying rounded IDE cables, if your goal
is to reduce cable clutter. -Dave
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:44:34 -0600, Beowulf
<beowulf.DeleteThis@wayoftheancients.trail> wrote:

>I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
>drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
>I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
>is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
>doing digital art, etc)?


SATA is an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one. It
offers more potential and ingeneral is as good or better
than PATA when all else is equal.

When all else isn't equal, for example if the SATA
controller were on a 32bit, 33MHz PCI bus, that will
bottleneck it to be worse than PATA through a southbridge
controller, or very similar if both were on the PCI bus. In
the most modern systems, SATA is not on the PCI bus but
sometimes a 2nd controller might be. The specific hardware
would need considered.

When an SATA and (P)ATA hard drive are the same internally,
these internals being the far most significant bottleneck,
there isn't much performance difference between the two. It
can matter more whether you want the most forward-supported
interface (SATA) or better support for emergency situations
(for example if your motherboard fails and you have an SATA
drive but no other SATA controller-equipped gear, you have
no way to get the files off, while with a PATA drive there
are tons of older systems and external enclosures you might
already have- or maybe you don't/won't have them, we can
only generalize since we don't know these variables).

Some high-performance drives are only available in SATA
format (WD Raptor), so that alone makes SATA more useful IF
you wanted to pay the premium for lower seek times... would
be most useful for an OS or database drive.

In general for a new system, an SATA drive is a good choice
but in the long run it may not matter much, performance-wise
the specific drive you choose makes more difference than
which interface.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:03:36 GMT, kony <spam.RemoveThis@spam.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:44:34 -0600, Beowulf
><beowulf.RemoveThis@wayoftheancients.trail> wrote:
>
>>I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
>>drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
>>I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
>>is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
>>doing digital art, etc)?
>
>In general for a new system, an SATA drive is a good choice
>but in the long run it may not matter much, performance-wise
>the specific drive you choose makes more difference than
>which interface.

Did they ever get away from just adding the SATA converter chip to an
IDE drive (seagate aside) ?

Seems the whole point of SATA is the simple cable for higher speeds.
You needed that funky ata66 ide cable to even get it to run at speed
vs the old ata33.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

>I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
> drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
> I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
> is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
> doing digital art, etc)?
>

If your buiding a new system then just go for SATA and if the Motherboard
supports SATA2 then go with that.
I cant see any reason not to go with SATA when the motherboard supports it,
and use the old parallel ide for CDROM.
At least you get rid of the old cables and master/slave jumpers. Easier to
setup and the price difference is minimal.
As for performance benefits then they are not great enough to worry about,
just go with SATA.
The old parallel ATA will disappear before long like the parallel/serial
ports have mostly gone.
regards,
Graham...
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 07:05:21 -0800, spamtime inscribed to the world:

> If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
> install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
> need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
> drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

Interesting, good to know.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On 6 Mar 2006 07:05:21 -0800, spamtime.TakeThisOut@ntlworld.com wrote:

>If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
>install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
>need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
>drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!


That just made up my mind. ATA133 it is. Screw SATA.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

"Larry Roberts" wrote:
> spamtime.RemoveThis@ntlworld.com wrote:
>
>>If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
>>install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
>>need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
>>drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!
>
>
> That just made up my mind. ATA133 it is. Screw SATA.

What he meant to say was that you need to load the SATA
*driveRs* from a floppy during WinXP installation. Is it so hard
to just copy those files to a CD or to make a slipstreamed
installation CD with the SATA drivers included in it? Think
ahead to your next hard drive upgrade.

*TimDaniels*
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006 10:26:56 -0800, "Timothy Daniels"
<TDaniels.TakeThisOut@NoSpamDot.com> wrote:

>"Larry Roberts" wrote:
>> spamtime.TakeThisOut@ntlworld.com wrote:
>>
>>>If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
>>>install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
>>>need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
>>>drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!
>>
>>
>> That just made up my mind. ATA133 it is. Screw SATA.
>
> What he meant to say was that you need to load the SATA
>*driveRs* from a floppy during WinXP installation. Is it so hard
>to just copy those files to a CD or to make a slipstreamed
>installation CD with the SATA drivers included in it? Think
>ahead to your next hard drive upgrade.


Hard, no, but a bit senseless to go to that effort instead
of just normally equipping a system - with a floppy drive.
Nobody has to "like" floppy drives, but nobody has to like
resistor "R4" on a motherboard either even though it might
be kinda important to have.

Seems at some point people mistakenly assumed that because
OEM systems started shipping without floppy, that this meant
it was a good idea. Nope, they did that primarily because
it was a few dollars cheaper and they had regularly used
restoration CDs which are bootable so there wasn't ever this
normal event of having drive controller files on floppy.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

FWIW, I recently installed a SATA drive, and installing WinXP/SP2
(slipstreamed) was totally uncomplicated.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 22:52:55 -0500, ToolPackinMama
<laura.DeleteThis@lauragoodwin.org> wrote:

>FWIW, I recently installed a SATA drive, and installing WinXP/SP2
>(slipstreamed) was totally uncomplicated.


Sure, it isn't complicated... but it did have to be
slipstreamed. All those little "easy" things add up.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

"GrahamH" <graham RemoveThis @harrison3951.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:duh370$2fe$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...

> If your buiding a new system then just go for SATA and if the Motherboard
> supports SATA2 then go with that.
> I cant see any reason not to go with SATA when the motherboard supports
> it, and use the old parallel ide for CDROM.
> At least you get rid of the old cables and master/slave jumpers. Easier to
> setup and the price difference is minimal.
> As for performance benefits then they are not great enough to worry about,
> just go with SATA.
> The old parallel ATA will disappear before long like the parallel/serial
> ports have mostly gone.

I think this is true, sometimes. I have two Raptors in a RAID0 array taking
up my on-chip SATA RAID controller (ICH5R), plus three other devices using
PATA. The mobo has one extra SATA RAID controller, but it isn't part of the
chipset, which means initializing it at boot-up and taking an extra few
seconds for that process.

For that reason I am using PATA for my large D: drive (storage and backup),
and it is plenty fast for this task.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA? 

<spamtime.RemoveThis@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:1141657521.109817.48160@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...

> If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
> install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
> need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
> drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

This isn't always the case. With many motherboards, including the Asus
P4C800 and Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (both having the Intel 875 chipset), a SATA
drive will install without drivers because SATA is routed through IDE by
default. I just built a system with the above Asus mobo and a SATA boot
drive, and there were no drivers installed, Device Manager showing only IDE
controllers activated.
 >> Stay informed about: SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA?