A7N8X and Sata drive without Raid??

[Jbob]

Ok here's the scoop. I'm building a new system for my son to game with.
I've accumulated all the needed parts. I assembled it together tonight and
flashed the latest Uber1007 Bios. As is well so far. I purchased a 200GB
WD SATA hard drive to use thinking it was faster than normal drives(1st time
trying a Sata drive). Now I'm not so sure. Is there any advantage to using
a Sata drive if you don't plan on using Raid? I have no need for Raid on
his system. Did I waste my money buying a Sata drive? I guess I could just
use it as a regular EIDE drive right?

 

[Ben Pope]

Ok here's the scoop. I'm building a new system for my son to game with.
I've accumulated all the needed parts. I assembled it together tonight
and flashed the latest Uber1007 Bios. As is well so far. I purchased a
200GB WD SATA hard drive to use thinking it was faster than normal
drives(1st time trying a Sata drive). Now I'm not so sure. Is there any
advantage to using a Sata drive if you don't plan on using Raid? I have
no need for Raid on his system. Did I waste my money buying a Sata
drive? I guess I could just use it as a regular EIDE drive right?

If you seperate the drive mechanism from the controller you will see that
the mechanism itself, with its limitations imposed by the physical world is
the main component when determining speed. The controller merely shifts
that data across the bus. Most of the SATA drives at the moment are a
complete ATA drive with an ATA to SATA bridge. The newer SATA drives
support tagged queuing and that can help a bit with throughput, but unless
you have very high disk I/O from many processes I doubt tou'd notice the
difference.

Sa basically you can have two identical mechanisms, producing nearly
identical specs, one will be ATA one will be SATA.

Most good ATA drives are 7200RPM, 8 MB cache etc. If you want faster you'll
want a 10 000RPM drive such as the WD Raptor.

Ben

 

[Courseyauto]

Ok here's the scoop. I'm building a new system for my son to game with.
I've accumulated all the needed parts. I assembled it together tonight and
flashed the latest Uber1007 Bios. As is well so far. I purchased a 200GB
WD SATA hard drive to use thinking it was faster than normal drives(1st time
trying a Sata drive). Now I'm not so sure. Is there any advantage to using
a Sata drive if you don't plan on using Raid? I have no need for Raid on
his system. Did I waste my money buying a Sata drive? I guess I could just
use it as a regular EIDE drive right?
Ok here's the low down . The sata controller you have on the A7N8X uses the
PCI buss to control the sata drive So the only advantage you will
get is ths smaller cables. The only SATA controller that is off the PCI buss
and gives a 150 mb transfer rate is the INTEL ICH5 chipset motherboards ie
875 and 865 chipsets. But i wouldn't worry about it because the HD has no
effect on gaming except for loading the next level of play. Yes it will
function as a regular ATA dive with no SATA benefits on that motherboard.
DOUG

 

[Jbob]

If you seperate the drive mechanism from the controller you will see that
the mechanism itself, with its limitations imposed by the physical world is
the main component when determining speed. The controller merely shifts
that data across the bus. Most of the SATA drives at the moment are a
complete ATA drive with an ATA to SATA bridge. The newer SATA drives
support tagged queuing and that can help a bit with throughput, but unless
you have very high disk I/O from many processes I doubt tou'd notice the
difference.

Sa basically you can have two identical mechanisms, producing nearly
identical specs, one will be ATA one will be SATA.

Most good ATA drives are 7200RPM, 8 MB cache etc. If you want faster you'll
want a 10 000RPM drive such as the WD Raptor.

Ben

Thanks Ben(I also have your A7N8X page FAQ bookmarked.)

I guess I shoulda did more research before I purchased a Sata drive. It
took reading many posts before I finally even checked out what it was. I
new they had Raid capability but that is as far as I got. I see now that
Sata drives basically gave the IDE world a good Raid option without using
SCSI. In reality I didn't pay that much more for Sata drive than a IDE
would have cost so no big loss. FWIW I did a bunch of Google searching last
night but didn't find much info on Sata drives either. Took me forever to
figure out that I could use standard power connectors instead of Sata power
connectors which weren't included with my board or drive. The WD web page
doesn't have diagrams for the Sata drives either(jumpers, etc).Duh!

 

[Courseyauto]

I guess I shoulda did more research before I purchased a Sata drive. It
took reading many posts before I finally even checked out what it was. I
new they had Raid capability but that is as far as I got. I see now that
Sata drives basically gave the IDE world a good Raid option without using
SCSI. In reality I didn't pay that much more for Sata drive than a IDE
would have cost so no big loss. FWIW I did a bunch of Google searching last
night but didn't find much info on Sata drives either. Took me forever to
figure out that I could use standard power connectors instead of Sata power
connectors which weren't included with my board or drive. The WD web page
doesn't have diagrams for the Sata drives either(jumpers, etc).Duh!


The WD raptor 10000 rpm sata has jumpers and in most cases you the default
settings. The raptor is a considerably faster drive than the 7200 drives.
DOUG

 

[Ben Pope]

Thanks Ben(I also have your A7N8X page FAQ bookmarked.)

No probs.

I guess I shoulda did more research before I purchased a Sata drive. It
took reading many posts before I finally even checked out what it was. I
new they had Raid capability but that is as far as I got.

The SATA controllers tend to have RAID capability. The drives themselves
don;t know anything about it.

I see now that
Sata drives basically gave the IDE world a good Raid option without using
SCSI. In reality I didn't pay that much more for Sata drive than a IDE
would have cost so no big loss.

Indeed. Seems to be about £20.

FWIW I did a bunch of Google searching
last night but didn't find much info on Sata drives either. Took me
forever to figure out that I could use standard power connectors instead
of Sata power connectors which weren't included with my board or drive.

Yep - drive dependant, just don't use both!

The WD web page doesn't have diagrams for the Sata drives either(jumpers,
etc).Duh!

No requirement for jumpers - one cable, one drive.

Ben

 

[George A. Wilson]

I have just completed two systems based off the a7n8x deluxe. Here is what
I have found:

System 1 using 2 80GB Maxtor SATA 7200 rpm drives RAID0
System 2 using 2 36GB Western Digitial SATA 10,000 rpm drives RAID0

The WDC drives ran $27 more a piece

Always thought WDC was slower and have used Maxtor for the last 5 years
because of this. The 10K spin of the WDC, oh, oh, oh, and with RAID0. XP
Home took 30 minutes (after format) for System 1 (Maxtor). System 2 took
just less than 20 minutes.

However, the Performance test out of Norton System Works 2004 for the hard
drives shows the Maxtor as still kicking some serious ass. So I am a little
confused. Fast install on XP, but performance tests says the Western
Digital sucks.

Either way though, I did test before I raided the drives and both SATA
drives were faster than IDE drives.

Hope it helps, or maybe I muddied it up even further? In the end, I will be
staying with Maxtor.

 

[Ben Pope]

I have just completed two systems based off the a7n8x deluxe. Here is
what I have found:

System 1 using 2 80GB Maxtor SATA 7200 rpm drives RAID0
System 2 using 2 36GB Western Digitial SATA 10,000 rpm drives RAID0

I have a Raptor too, great drives.

The WDC drives ran $27 more a piece

Always thought WDC was slower and have used Maxtor for the last 5 years
because of this. The 10K spin of the WDC, oh, oh, oh, and with RAID0. XP
Home took 30 minutes (after format) for System 1 (Maxtor). System 2 took
just less than 20 minutes.

Yeah, I wrote a 300MB file in like 7 seconds... that impressed me.

However, the Performance test out of Norton System Works 2004 for the hard
drives shows the Maxtor as still kicking some serious ass. So I am a
little confused. Fast install on XP, but performance tests says the
Western Digital sucks.

Either way though, I did test before I raided the drives and both SATA
drives were faster than IDE drives.

Thats 'cos they're 10k RPM.

Hope it helps, or maybe I muddied it up even further? In the end, I will
be staying with Maxtor.

I'm surprised the performance shows less on the RAID partitions. Whats your
HD Tach score for them? Ooh, and while you're there, for the Maxtors?

I'm getting (Max / Min / Ave) of 60 / 36 / 50MB/s with a seek of 8.7ms

Ben

 

[kenward]

No probs.


The SATA controllers tend to have RAID capability. The drives themselves
don;t know anything about it.


Indeed. Seems to be about £20.

Current UK price differences for IDE SATA 160GB is about £5. That's
for equivalent specs.

MK




_______________________________________________________________________
Michael Kenward Words for sale

 

[Ben Pope]

Current UK price differences for IDE SATA 160GB is about £5. That's
for equivalent specs.

Fair enough, it's been a few months since I compared.

Ben