SATA newbie with questions!

[Tony]

SATA 3Gb/s

The last pc I home-built was PCI and IDE...

I got most of the pieces for my new rig, and hopefully in a week or so
will be putting it together.

The question I have is......

I know almost nothing about Sata drives.. I know it's got a narrow
(usually red) cable with a small plug on the end..

I have an Asus A8n-E board (still in it's box)

"
SATA 3Gb/s
A8N-E supports next-generation SATA hard drives based on the new SATA
3Gb/s storage specification. Furthermore, the chipset has two
dedicated SATA controllers delivering more scalable performance and
doubles the bus bandwidth for fast hard drive data retrieval and
saves."

I bought two drives..


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144417
Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144394
Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

I don't plan on doing any sort of raid what-so-ever..
and I plan on retaining an 80gig IDE drive as my Windows drive

Is SATA like the IDE drives where I would have put each of the two
drives as a master on it's own channel since this Mobo has two SATA
controllers onboard? or do I have to daisy-chain them?

In either set up, would the 250GB drive be faster than the ATA150
drive?

Also,,,

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/AccessoryOverview.asp

The two WD drives I bought from Newegg were OEM.
I don't think they come with a "SATA cable with SecureConnect"
A magazine article I read said that "this is a wider head on the sata
cable that also plugs into the power plug, yet takes no power from the
motherboard". This makes no sense to me.. then how does it get power
to the drive then?

Do I need to order two of these cables from westerndigital.com?

the Asus mobo box has at least two of the normal red sata cables in
it..


Any comments/thoughts is appreciated

Tony!

 

[Mark A]

SATA 3Gb/s

The two WD drives I bought from Newegg were OEM.
I don't think they come with a "SATA cable with SecureConnect"
A magazine article I read said that "this is a wider head on the sata
cable that also plugs into the power plug, yet takes no power from the
motherboard". This makes no sense to me.. then how does it get power
to the drive then?

Do I need to order two of these cables from westerndigital.com?

the Asus mobo box has at least two of the normal red sata cables in
it..
Any comments/thoughts is appreciated

Tony!

Hard drives do not get power from the motherboard, the get power from the
PSU.

Western Digital SATA drives can use one of two different cabling techniques:

- a regular SATA cable (they come in any color, not just red) connected to
the SATA controller on the motherboard and SATA power connector that runs
power from your PSU to the hard drive.

- A WD SecureConnect SATA cable (that is less likely to fall off) and a
regular Molex power connector to your PSU. If you use SecureConnect you
cannot use a SATA power connector and must use the Molex connector from your
PSU. WD SATA drives have 2 power connectors (SATA and Molex).

SATA drives are not daisy chained like IDE. Each plugs into the motherboard.
If you have 2 SATA controllers (4 SATA connections), you would theoretically
get better performance if you put each drive on a separate controller, but
you might not notice any real performance benefit in the real world.
However, it certainly will not hurt to use both controllers.

 

[Paul]

Also,,,

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/AccessoryOverview.asp

The two WD drives I bought from Newegg were OEM.
I don't think they come with a "SATA cable with SecureConnect"
A magazine article I read said that "this is a wider head on the sata
cable that also plugs into the power plug, yet takes no power from the
motherboard". This makes no sense to me.. then how does it get power
to the drive then?

Do I need to order two of these cables from westerndigital.com?

the Asus mobo box has at least two of the normal red sata cables in
it..


Any comments/thoughts is appreciated

Tony!

Secureconnect is here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/storage/ext-sata/cable-b.jpg

There is a picture of the connector area of a WD drive here.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=982

As pictured, that drive has dual power. Either a cable connects
to the Legacy ATA (Molex) connector on the right hand side, or
a SATA power blob connects to the blue section on the left.

The WD SecureConnect does a clever thing. It occupies both the
blue (power) and green (data) SATA connector sections, but makes
no electrical connection to the blue pins. All that extra plastic
prevents the connector from falling out. If you use the WD
SecureConnect cable, you would still need to connect the legacy
Molex to get power to the drive.

For jumpers, check the label on the drive first, then try
the WD knowledgebase. For example, on a drive I was just
looking at, one jumper controls spread spectrum (disabled),
one jumper controls staggered spin (PM2 - disable unless you
have a need to delay drive spinup, and the BIOS supports it),
one jumper controls interface rate (150MB/sec or 300MB/sec) and
that one should be set according to the limits of the motherboard
chipset. The drive is a "Master" and there is no jumper for
that, and at the current time, there is one drive per cable.

There is a "port multiplier" option coming for SATA, so at some
point in the future, it may be possible for one motherboard SATA
connector to control multiple drives. Whether this will be
popular or reliable, remains to be seen.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Boba & Ilinka]

I would rather put 2 drives in raid 0. Than you really see advantage of sata
drive. And both you will see as one drive.

boba vancouver

 

[Norm]

I would rather put 2 drives in raid 0. Than you really see advantage of
sata drive. And both you will see as one drive.

boba vancouver

Interesting topic..Thanks Tony!!

I too have a new MB (Asus A8V) with connectors as Sata1, Sata2 and
Sata_Raid1, Sata_Raid2, plus the normal IDE connectors. My computer is
mostly used for entertainment. I have already purchased 2 x Sata 80 gb hard
drives and my currently boot drive is a 60 gb ide drive with XP pro. What
are my best setup options from here? Any suggestion are appreciated
If I need to reinstall XP that's not a problem, when I setup the new MB, I
did a XP repair.

nc