Serial ATA hard drive question...

[Atici72]

Hi folks!

Has anybody had any experience with the new "serial ATA" hard drive? The new
motherboards also offer built-in serial ATA connection for serial ATA hard
drives.

As known, regular hard drives with parallel IDE connection have a bottleneck
and can only transfer data up to 100MB per second or so.

As claimed by the manufacturers, the serial ATA hard drives can transfer data
up to 1.5GB per second. Logically thinking, the performance improvement of this
new serial ATA hard drive must be very noticeable and significant compared to
regular hard drives with parallel IDE connection. Given the fact that
motherboard supports and has built-in serial ATA connection, I wonder if the
performance of this new serial ATA hard drive is really significant. Has
anybody had any experience?

Thanks in advance...

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi folks!

No folks in here, just us rather badly behaved animals!!

Has anybody had any experience with the new "serial ATA"
hard drive? The new motherboards also offer built-in serial
ATA connection for serial ATA hard drives.

As known, regular hard drives with
parallel IDE connection have a bottleneck

Nope, they dont.

and can only transfer data up to 100MB per second or so.

And the physical part of the drive, the heads
and platters, cant deliver anything like that, so
the parallel IDE connection is NOT a bottleneck.

As claimed by the manufacturers, the serial ATA hard
drives can transfer data up to 1.5GB per second.

Pity about the rest of the drive which cant.

Logically thinking, the performance improvement of this new
serial ATA hard drive must be very noticeable and significant
compared to regular hard drives with parallel IDE connection.

Nope, not when the connection to the drive isnt the bottleneck.

Given the fact that motherboard supports and has
built-in serial ATA connection, I wonder if the performance
of this new serial ATA hard drive is really significant.

Nope, because what limits the transfer of data is the
other physical stuff, the sectors per track, RPM etc.

Has anybody had any experience?

Yep, plenty of rigorous tests on the review sites like storagereview.

 

[Tom]

The bottlekneck is in the drive itself, followed by the system bus and
bandwidth.

 

[Atici72]

Are you guys trying to imply that there is no reason to buy a serial ATA hard
drive whatsoever because it doesn't offer any improved performance worth
buying?

 

[jaeger]

Are you guys trying to imply that there is no reason to buy a serial ATA hard
drive whatsoever because it doesn't offer any improved performance worth
buying?

Bingo. If a serial ATA drive is fast, it has nothing to do with it
being SATA.

 

[Rod Speed]

Are you guys trying to imply that there is no reason
to buy a serial ATA hard drive whatsoever because it
doesn't offer any improved performance worth buying?

Yes, tho it does have more future. You may sometime
want to use it on a motherboard that only has SATA.

 

[Tom]

With raid and the right system, you will see the difference. Also helps to
have 10k rpm disk

 

[Tom]

When you say "you guys", does that mean that others have replied?
I'm having an obvious newsgroup problem and need to provide my isp an error
case, thanks.

 

[Rod Speed]

With raid and the right system, you will see the difference.
Bullshit.

Also helps to have 10k rpm disk

Go back to sleep, Tommy child.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Are you guys

trying to imply

Are we that vague? Oops, forgot, sleepless not quite "Tom" is back.

that there is no reason to buy a serial ATA hard drive whatsoever
because it doesn't offer any improved performance worth buying?

Bingo.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

With raid and the right system, you will see the difference. Also helps to
have 10k rpm disk

What a load of crap.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

When you say "you guys", does that mean that others have replied?

I'm having an obvious newsgroup problem

Isn't that the truth.

and need to provide my isp an error case, thanks.

Perhaps it would help if you removed all those ill-perceived
Rod Speed aliases from your blocked senders list ;-)

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hi folks!

Has anybody had any experience with the new "serial ATA" hard drive?
The new motherboards also offer built-in serial ATA connection for serial
ATA hard drives.

As known,

What parallel world do you live in?

regular hard drives with parallel IDE connection have a bottle-
neck and can only transfer data up to 100MB per second or so.

Actually a bit more (~120) and that is only in burst mode and counting
command overhead. Bursts however never actually last a second as the
HD cannot sustain that. (If that were the case any harddrive would be
as fast as the other one). Hence drives are measured/compaired in STR.
(STR = Sustained Transfer Rate).

As claimed by the manufacturers, the serial ATA hard drives can
transfer data up to 1.5GB per second.

Nope, they don't. And it's Gb, not GB.

Logically thinking,

That's impossible with such false assumptions.

the performance improvement of this new serial ATA
hard drive must be very noticeable and significant com-
pared to regular hard drives with parallel IDE connection.
Bummer.

Given the fact that motherboard supports and has built-in
serial ATA connection, I wonder if the performance of
this new serial ATA hard drive is really significant.

So, nope.

 

[Wayne Youngman]

Hi,

missed the beginning of this thread, but if you are buying a new disk why
not get a SATA one?. I am very happy with my new pair of WD-SE 120GBs
running in RAID-0.

IDE is still good (better value), but me myself I don't like the cables
(lol). SATA is the future, so one way or another you will be using it.

laters,

Wayne ][

 

[Bob WIllard]

Are you guys trying to imply that there is no reason to buy a serial ATA hard
drive whatsoever because it doesn't offer any improved performance worth
buying?

There is no performance advantage of SATA over PATA, unless you
consider that some SATA HDs run 10K RPM while the fastest PATA HDs
are 7.2K RPM.

But SATA uses a smaller cable than PATA, allowing for less blockage
of air flow. And, SATA uses a longer cable than PATA, making it a
bit easier in some cases to stick HDs where you want in a large case.

Some day, relatively soon, PATA will be phased out in favor of SATA.
When that happens, PATA HDs will have higher prices than comparable
SATA HDs. Currently, SATA HDs have slightly higher prices, but are
approaching parity even now.

 

[Mark M]

Bingo. If a serial ATA drive is fast, it has nothing to do with
it being SATA.

So what is the advantage of SATA?

 

[Mark M]

There is no performance advantage of SATA over PATA, unless you
consider that some SATA HDs run 10K RPM while the fastest PATA
HDs are 7.2K RPM.

But SATA uses a smaller cable than PATA, allowing for less
blockage of air flow. And, SATA uses a longer cable than PATA,
making it a bit easier in some cases to stick HDs where you want
in a large case.

Some day, relatively soon, PATA will be phased out in favor of
SATA. When that happens, PATA HDs will have higher prices than
comparable SATA HDs. Currently, SATA HDs have slightly higher
prices, but are approaching parity even now.

So for now it's not really worth buying a SATA drive?

 

[Rod Speed]

So what is the advantage of SATA?

Its got more future in the sense that as the physical
detail with hard drives continues to improve, RPM and
sectors per track mostly, it will still be able to handle
the higher thruput those drives will be capable doing then.

Its got some other advantages like a better physical
cable design too. You can have the drive further from
the motherboard connector which can be handy with
the bigger cases, and doesnt restrict the airflow.

It should be cheaper to manufacture too once its
got to the same product maturity that PATA is now.

 

[Rod Speed]

So for now it's not really worth buying a SATA drive?

It does at least in theory give you more future.
You may want to use that drive on a motherboard
that can only do SATA some time in the future.

You may also decide that its too slow to bother with
when compared with new drives at that time too.

 

[Bob WIllard]

So for now it's not really worth buying a SATA drive?

Generally, IMHO, no. But, there are exceptions: it is appealing,
for example, to use SATA for on-line HDs and leave PATA for optical
stuff and backup HDs in some multi-drive systems.