SATA or EIDE drives

[Edwin]

Dear all,

I am looking to build a new PC and was wondering about the new SATA drives.
So,
those out there who have some experience using these drives might be able to
help me choose
which would be a better choice to go for. I am planning to install a very
simple single hdd system
possible no RAID necessary but I would like a fast drive since I do do a bit
of video editing and
CD compiling / burning.

Rgds all

Ed

 

[Courseyauto]

Dear all,

I am looking to build a new PC and was wondering about the new SATA drives.
So,
those out there who have some experience using these drives might be able to
help me choose
which would be a better choice to go for. I am planning to install a very
simple single hdd system
possible no RAID necessary but I would like a fast drive since I do do a bit
of video editing and
CD compiling / burning.

Rgds all

Ed
The only SATA drive that that will give you better performance
over an ATA drive is the WD raptor 10000 rpm drive. Getting a
SATA drive set up on a system can be quite an ordeal if you have read any of
the threads concerning SATA drives. The only MB that will give you the
theoretical 150mb transfer is an INTEL board with the ICH5 chipset,all other
boards run the SATA controller through the PCI buss so theres no performance
gain with those. DO some and reseach and you will see SATA is not what its
all cracked up to be.
DOUG

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Dear all,

I am looking to build a new PC and was wondering about the new SATA drives.
So,
those out there who have some experience using these drives might be able to
help me choose
which would be a better choice to go for. I am planning to install a very
simple single hdd system
possible no RAID necessary but I would like a fast drive since I do do a bit
of video editing and
CD compiling / burning.

Rgds all

First 'key thing', is to understand, that no drive currently in existence
(or even any planned for quite a few years), actually exceeds the speed of
an ATA100 interface (in fact the very fastest are only just 'nudging' to the
speed of the ATA66 interface on their outermost tracks). So all the
different 'faster' interfaces provide, are rapid 'bursts' to/from the data
cache. Given how small this is, the gain from faster interfaces is pretty
marginal...
Currently the fastest SATA drive in existence, is the WD 'Raptor'. This is
significantly faster than any parallel ATA drive, but pays for it, in terms
of relatively smaller capacity.
The SATA cables, though thinner, have a plug design, that is pretty awful,
which often negates a lot of the improvement (requiring careful tying, if
problems are not to appear...).
For best speed, don't install a 'simple single HDD system'. Instead, the
cheapest/easiest thing, is to use two ATA100 or better drives, and run one
for the OS/programs, and the second for your video editing. The problem is
that with any single drive system, when the system has to fetch a file, or
handle swapping, it takes several mSec to move the heads from one part of
the drive to another. If at the same time you are trying to edit video, this
is a significant pause. If the two operations are on different drives, the
problem doesn't appear. This doesn't involve the complexity of RAID.
Some motherboards, do offer an extra pair of 'non RAID' SATA connectors, and
using these for the HD's, leaves the EIDE connectors for things like the CD
burner. IDE performs at it's best with a single drive on a cable, and hence
this can be a 'good thing'.

Best Wishes

 

[Bert]

The only SATA drive that that will give you better performance
over an ATA drive is the WD raptor 10000 rpm drive. Getting a
SATA drive set up on a system can be quite an ordeal if you have read any of
the threads concerning SATA drives. The only MB that will give you the
theoretical 150mb transfer is an INTEL board with the ICH5 chipset,all other
boards run the SATA controller through the PCI buss so theres no performance
gain with those. DO some and reseach and you will see SATA is not what its
all cracked up to be.
DOUG

The only advantage that I can see to the SATA is that it will enable you to
run two IDE's (CD-RW and DVD or whatever) on each separate channels as
master drives. I am not certain that even that will give you any
performance increase. I have set up SATA on WinXP Pro and it is not that
big of an ordeal, yet for the almost immeasurable advantages of SATA, I
don't think it is really worth the hassle.

Another thing is that if you use separate channels for your other IDE's, you
will not be able to use the "on the fly" option for copying CD's from one
drive to another.
Bert

 

[Dave]

Also, be aware that SATA drives are not very well supported when it comes to
disk backup/recovery software. I have a maxtor SATA drive connected to an
ASUS A7V8X motherboard and my Acronis Imaging and reovery software does not
see the drive when booting from a boot disk. If I was to purchase a new
drive it would not be a SATA.

Dave

 

[Bazis]

Beside the other points mentioned, I have never lost 1 frame during digital
video capture in all my life!! Doing it for 7 years now and that means a
lot!! Better to think about what processor, seems that the P4 is a lot more
faster in video editing!! Otherwise go for SCSI!!!!!!!

Bazis

 

[Egil Solberg]

the threads concerning SATA drives. The only MB that will give you the
theoretical 150mb transfer is an INTEL board with the ICH5 chipset,all other
boards run the SATA controller through the PCI buss so theres no performance
gain with those.

I believe VIA ha s now been able to integrate the SATA-controller inside
their newest southbridge VT8237, as can be found in f.ex the Asus A7V600.

 

[DX]

any what


The only advantage that I can see to the SATA is that it will enable you to
run two IDE's (CD-RW and DVD or whatever) on each separate channels as
master drives. I am not certain that even that will give you any
performance increase. I have set up SATA on WinXP Pro and it is not that
big of an ordeal, yet for the almost immeasurable advantages of SATA, I
don't think it is really worth the hassle.

Another thing is that if you use separate channels for your other IDE's, you
will not be able to use the "on the fly" option for copying CD's from one
drive to another.

Erm....hehehehhehe.....ahem

What ????

Of course you can; In fact using seperate channels for DVD and CDRW is
advisable.

Do original poster:

Do use SATA Much tidier cabling; Some future proofing.
Do use seperate IDE channels for other devices
Do ignore people who say that their applications dont work with SATA blah
blah; simply find one that does.
Do ignore wrong infomation

Bert

DX

 

[Philip Callan]

Do use SATA Much tidier cabling; Some future proofing.

Oh yeah, as soon as a SATA Native DVD and CD writer hits the market, and
falls into
a respectable price range, i'm switching, these power cables and connectors
are 1000% times
better than IDE

(how many times have you diagnosed a friends 'faulty' ide device, only to
find they
had reversed the cable since it didnt have a pin1 indicator, or that 'tab'
on the top or blocked holes
like any respectable cable should)

IDE Cables (excluding rounded) are wide and ugly, and restrict airflow, sata
is like 1/10th the size.

Do use seperate IDE channels for other devices

Oh yeah, especially if you intend to do any 'on the fly' copying.

Do ignore people who say that their applications dont work with SATA blah
blah; simply find one that does.

I still shake my head at this, provided your motherboard supports SATA, its
just another ide device to software, why WOULD it have problems.

Do ignore wrong infomation

But there's so much of it to choose from

 

[Rob Stow]

I believe VIA ha s now been able to integrate the SATA-controller inside
their newest southbridge VT8237, as can be found in f.ex the Asus A7V600.

I've used several drives where there are both and EIDE and SATA
models of what are otherwise the same drive. The SATA drive
wins every time - even if by small margins in some cases.

While it is true that your basic 32 bit/33 MHz PCI bus doesn't
have the capacity to match the capabilities of a SATA drive,
the SATA drives do a better job of keeping the bus filled than
do their EIDE counterparts. When a SATA controller+drive and
an EIDE controller+drive are both on a 32 bit/33 MHz PCI bus,
the *peak* transfer rates for both will have the same upper
limit - as determined by the PCI bus - but the SATA drive will
have a higher *average* throughput than its EIDE counterpart.

And above all, I love the SATA cables. Even the best-routed
IDE cables impede airflow a lot more than do SATA cables -
which means that if you SATA systems can run noticeably cooler
and quieter. Even rounded PATA cables can't compare - they
simply aren't long enough or flexible enough to compete with
SATA cables.

I just wish CD and DVD drive manufacturer's would get off
their butts and join the SATA parade so I could do away with
PATA cables completely. Unfortunately using SATA-to-PATA
adapters works well only with hard drives and not with any
of the CD and DVD drives that I've tried them with. Even
so, being able to cut down the number of PATA cables in
a system down from three to one is *really* nice. If anyone
out there has seen a SATA DVD writer yet, I would appreciate
it if you could post a link.

 

[Jeff Labute]

Dear all,

I am looking to build a new PC and was wondering about the new SATA drives.
So,
those out there who have some experience using these drives might be able to
help me choose
which would be a better choice to go for. I am planning to install a very
simple single hdd system
possible no RAID necessary but I would like a fast drive since I do do a bit
of video editing and
CD compiling / burning.

Rgds all

Ed

Not only are you limited by the PCI bus speed, but also, you're not sucking
data off the platters that fast either.
You'll see in the specs that for the Western Digital Caviar 250GB S-ata 7200
RPM... they call it...
Buffer to Host, 150MB/s for serial-ata
Buffer to Disk, 748Mbits/s. Getting data off or to the platters is much
slower... sometimes the
sustained data rate is only around 50 to 70MB/s for these so called
Performance drives...so...who cares about all this crap... parallel or
Serial-ATA. What matters is still the mechanical speed of the drive to
shave those seconds off thousands of accesses... and maybe having an array
of drives with scsi. You'd think S-ATA300 or 600 would be here but..what
would we need it for if you can't read the platters that quickly.

Jeff

 

[Derek Hawkins]

so...who cares about all this crap... parallel or

Serial-ATA.

Perhaps people about to buy and who have a choice between the two. What's
clear is that PATA has no performance or physical advantage over SATA. SATA
has a more compact cabling setup at the very least and is also clearly the
future for non-SCSI hard drives. So unless there are other mitigating
factors (cost, backward compatibility with older motherboards etc.), its
choice over PATA seems to be a no brainer IMO.

 

[DreamMaker]

Not only are you limited by the PCI bus speed, but also, you're not sucking
data off the platters that fast either.
You'll see in the specs that for the Western Digital Caviar 250GB S-ata 7200
RPM... they call it...
Buffer to Host, 150MB/s for serial-ata
Buffer to Disk, 748Mbits/s. Getting data off or to the platters is much
slower... sometimes the
sustained data rate is only around 50 to 70MB/s for these so called
Performance drives...so...who cares about all this crap... parallel or
Serial-ATA. What matters is still the mechanical speed of the drive to
shave those seconds off thousands of accesses... and maybe having an array
of drives with scsi. You'd think S-ATA300 or 600 would be here but..what
would we need it for if you can't read the platters that quickly.

Jeff

Thus by what you've sayd it is is useless to buy the last technology
because it gives only 50mgs/s to 70mgs/s. a performence which is very
close to a maxtor dimond maxplus 9 56mgs/s? a low end disk

 

[Jeff Labute]

Yeah...

I am saying... probably a different technology would be better...like... a
SCSI raid array
with their high performance drives..etc (4.5ms, 15000 rpm). Not that I have
it... but the race to get
faster P-ata and S-ata seems kinda pointless since the so called
high-performance
consumer drives don't go that fast anyways... slow access, slow rpm...ATA133
is nice but
but it's really only if I could say..ATA56 from the platters to the IDE
electronics. So, even if S-ata
goes up to SATA300 or 600.... is there any benefit? In burst mode maybe a
little... but in terms
of sustained transfer speed... won't see any difference.

I just bought into S-ata myself... cuz i like the cables..LOL. If i could
afford a server board
with 64bit PCI slots... and a $500 ultrawidescsi card with multiple 15000rpm
SCSI drives
I would definately have a performance gain...lol..otherwise... in the
consumer PC world...
fighting for performance is a slow and lengthy battle. I'm tempted to try a
WD Raptor... do ya' notice much
difference with one? A Visual speed difference?

Jeff

 

[dgk]

Not only are you limited by the PCI bus speed, but also, you're not sucking
data off the platters that fast either.
You'll see in the specs that for the Western Digital Caviar 250GB S-ata 7200
RPM... they call it...
Buffer to Host, 150MB/s for serial-ata
Buffer to Disk, 748Mbits/s. Getting data off or to the platters is much
slower... sometimes the
sustained data rate is only around 50 to 70MB/s for these so called
Performance drives...so...who cares about all this crap... parallel or
Serial-ATA. What matters is still the mechanical speed of the drive to
shave those seconds off thousands of accesses... and maybe having an array
of drives with scsi. You'd think S-ATA300 or 600 would be here but..what
would we need it for if you can't read the platters that quickly.

Jeff

Well sure, 10000 rpm drives are faster than 7000. But they are three
times as expensive. Plus, they generate a lot more heat.

 

[DreamMaker]

Yeah...

I am saying... probably a different technology would be better...like... a
SCSI raid array
with their high performance drives..etc (4.5ms, 15000 rpm). Not that I have
it... but the race to get
faster P-ata and S-ata seems kinda pointless since the so called
high-performance
consumer drives don't go that fast anyways... slow access, slow rpm...ATA133
is nice but
but it's really only if I could say..ATA56 from the platters to the IDE
electronics. So, even if S-ata
goes up to SATA300 or 600.... is there any benefit? In burst mode maybe a
little... but in terms
of sustained transfer speed... won't see any difference.

I just bought into S-ata myself... cuz i like the cables..LOL. If i could
afford a server board
with 64bit PCI slots... and a $500 ultrawidescsi card with multiple 15000rpm
SCSI drives
I would definately have a performance gain...lol..otherwise... in the
consumer PC world...
fighting for performance is a slow and lengthy battle. I'm tempted to try a
WD Raptor... do ya' notice much
difference with one? A Visual speed difference?

Jeff

Hmm, so we could say that in theory, we could get a faster data
transfer rate if we could had a bus transfer of 64bits rater than a
32bits pci controller.

then again having the latess drive will not benefit much any
motherboard from this upgrade because of a restrained bus path.
In conclusion, we have the materail but we dont have the support to go
with it.
snif snif...

But hey like you've sayd i could get a s... load of wires and drives
and then getting some performance lol...

Just to compare the number i've downloaded a little program that bench
the hard drive. It's named HD Tach 2.7
--> with a western digital ata-100 i'm getting a low 30mb/s doh...
what's your stats...?
The program can be download here.
http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/13/8/13-8-70.shtml

On the web site of Maxtor drive compagnie they did some benchmark
http://www.maxtor.com/en/technologies/fast_drives/performance.htm

Notice that the graph is made out of Burst data transfer.

 

[Jeff Labute]

Hey that's a cool program....
When I test my New Maxtor 40GB ATA133... I get a maximum of 50.6MB/s and
Average of 42.9MB/s.
Not quite 133MB/s huh? I am sure the S-ATA 150 won't be much better if at
all ;-)

Jeff

 

[Philip Callan]

Hey that's a cool program....
When I test my New Maxtor 40GB ATA133... I get a maximum of 50.6MB/s and
Average of 42.9MB/s.
Not quite 133MB/s huh? I am sure the S-ATA 150 won't be much better if at
all ;-)

Thats why you need 2 or more in a raid to approach even the speeds your
hoping for, unless you get a 10k rpm + drive, your not going to do any
better, regardless of board/controller with a single drive.

 

[DreamMaker]

Hey that's a cool program....
When I test my New Maxtor 40GB ATA133... I get a maximum of 50.6MB/s and
Average of 42.9MB/s.

Good performance...
a 80 gigs will do around 56mb/s, i did some test with aida32 over my
friends comp...

Not quite 133MB/s huh? I am sure the S-ATA 150 won't be much better if at
all ;-)
Nop.

Jeff

Looks like maxtor drive is the way to go. I'm plannning to buy a

MAXTOR HDD 6Y080P0 80GB IDE ULTRA ATA133 7200RPM 8MB of buffer.

t'm only hoping that maxtor build that one with only one platter...
for a higher density and everything that goes with :->.

that would be the best drive for a (ide) system.

Hmm does rond cable do a better job than regular 40-80pin cable
For ide drive.

 

[Courseyauto]

Looks like maxtor drive is the way to go. I'm plannning to buy a

MAXTOR HDD 6Y080P0 80GB IDE ULTRA ATA133 7200RPM 8MB of buffer.

t'm only hoping that maxtor build that one with only one platter...
for a higher density and everything that goes with :->.

that would be the best drive for a (ide) system.

Hmm does rond cable do a better job than regular 40-80pin cable
For ide drive.


Check this review out,it's exactly what you want to know.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/4-maxtor-hdds.html