Serial ATA vs IDE?

[Lowel]

I have found that my 40 GB IDE drive is quickly becoming full. I have
seen some deals on both IDE and serial ATA drives. I know my
P4P800E-Deluxe motherboard will support serial ATA but I read
somewhere that it is hard to set up with Windows XP. Is this true?

I picked up a 250 GB Western Digital IDE drive today for $159 with $90
is rebates from Circuit City but wondering if I should take it back
and get a 250 GB Serial ATA drive. They have a 250 GB Serial ATA
drive for $179 but I saw outpost.com had it for $154 with $50 in
rebates (which unfortunately ended today but they sometimes start up
again in a day or two).

Is the real world speed difference worth the extra money? I mean, am I
likely to see a difference in everyday tasks and not just benchmarks?
I didn't think so when it cost $179 serial ATA vs $69 IDE(with the
rebates) but when I saw Outpost.com had the serial ATA drive for $104
with rebates, now I am not so sure. Plus if it is a hassle to set up,
then I may be better off staying with the IDE drive. Any thoughts?

I tried to search for reviews of IDE vs Serial ATA but didn't find
much and those I did were 3 years old. Thanks.

 

[Derek Baker]

I have found that my 40 GB IDE drive is quickly becoming full. I have
seen some deals on both IDE and serial ATA drives. I know my
P4P800E-Deluxe motherboard will support serial ATA but I read
somewhere that it is hard to set up with Windows XP. Is this true?

I picked up a 250 GB Western Digital IDE drive today for $159 with $90
is rebates from Circuit City but wondering if I should take it back
and get a 250 GB Serial ATA drive. They have a 250 GB Serial ATA
drive for $179 but I saw outpost.com had it for $154 with $50 in
rebates (which unfortunately ended today but they sometimes start up
again in a day or two).

Is the real world speed difference worth the extra money? I mean, am I
likely to see a difference in everyday tasks and not just benchmarks?
I didn't think so when it cost $179 serial ATA vs $69 IDE(with the
rebates) but when I saw Outpost.com had the serial ATA drive for $104
with rebates, now I am not so sure. Plus if it is a hassle to set up,
then I may be better off staying with the IDE drive. Any thoughts?

I tried to search for reviews of IDE vs Serial ATA but didn't find
much and those I did were 3 years old. Thanks.

I've just replaced a pair of PATA WD800JBs with SATA Samsung 120Ss. No
trouble with the setup on my MSI K8N Neo. Performance is from a fraction to
much, quicker depending on the test. How much of the improvement, if any, is
due to the interface I can't say, but I appreciate the much thinner cables.

 

[J. Clarke]

I have found that my 40 GB IDE drive is quickly becoming full. I have
seen some deals on both IDE and serial ATA drives. I know my
P4P800E-Deluxe motherboard will support serial ATA but I read
somewhere that it is hard to set up with Windows XP. Is this true?

For certain values of "hard". In general one needs to load a device driver
to support the SATA interface chip on the motherboard. If the disk is to
be your boot disk and you're going to clone rather than install fresh it's
important to remember to install the driver _first_. Sometimes this
process does not go smoothly.

Personally, I don't find it "hard" but then I didn't find it "hard" to key
in fifty pages of assembler code to get a new disk controller on my first
CP/M machine to work either, so don't use me as a standard.

I picked up a 250 GB Western Digital IDE drive today for $159 with $90
is rebates from Circuit City but wondering if I should take it back
and get a 250 GB Serial ATA drive. They have a 250 GB Serial ATA
drive for $179 but I saw outpost.com had it for $154 with $50 in
rebates (which unfortunately ended today but they sometimes start up
again in a day or two).

Is the real world speed difference worth the extra money?

If the drives are the same model with different interfaces then there is no
speed difference--the SATA drive, unless it's a Seagate, is an IDE drive
with an IDE to SATA bridge chip installed. With some models you get some
features enabled that in theory have an effect on performance, such as
command queuing, but in the real world they are mostly hype unless you're
running a heavily loaded server.

I mean, am I
likely to see a difference in everyday tasks and not just benchmarks?

Between a 250 gig SATA drive from WD or a 250 gid IDE drive from WD with the
same cache size, RPM, and storage density? No.

I didn't think so when it cost $179 serial ATA vs $69 IDE(with the
rebates) but when I saw Outpost.com had the serial ATA drive for $104
with rebates, now I am not so sure. Plus if it is a hassle to set up,
then I may be better off staying with the IDE drive. Any thoughts?

Spend the difference on RAM and you'll likely see more improvement.

 

[Rod Speed]

I've just replaced a pair of PATA WD800JBs with SATA Samsung 120Ss. No trouble
with the setup on my MSI K8N Neo. Performance is from a fraction to much,
quicker depending on the test.

That difference wasnt due to the interface standard, it was due
to differences in the physical drives, likely the number of platters.

How much of the improvement, if any, is due to the interface I can't say, but
I appreciate the much thinner cables.

Be careful with the connectors, they are a tad fragile compared with PATA.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have found that my 40 GB IDE drive is quickly becoming full. I have
seen some deals on both IDE and serial ATA drives. I know my
P4P800E-Deluxe motherboard will support serial ATA but I read
somewhere that it is hard to set up with Windows XP. Is this true?

Its a little more fiddly but no more than that and not always either.

I picked up a 250 GB Western Digital IDE drive today for $159
with $90 is rebates from Circuit City but wondering if I should
take it back and get a 250 GB Serial ATA drive. They have
a 250 GB Serial ATA drive for $179 but I saw outpost.com
had it for $154 with $50 in rebates (which unfortunately ended
today but they sometimes start up again in a day or two).

Is the real world speed difference worth the extra money? I mean, am
I likely to see a difference in everyday tasks and not just benchmarks?

You wont see any difference between the two drives
speed wise unless WD is playing silly buggers and
has a different number of platters in the two drives.

I didn't think so when it cost $179 serial ATA vs $69 IDE(with the
rebates) but when I saw Outpost.com had the serial ATA drive for
$104 with rebates, now I am not so sure. Plus if it is a hassle to set
up, then I may be better off staying with the IDE drive. Any thoughts?

You wont gain much for the extra money except thinner cables
and a bit more future in the sense that you may sometime have
a motherboard with no PATA connectors anymore.

I tried to search for reviews of IDE vs Serial ATA but didn't
find much and those I did were 3 years old. Thanks.

The short story is that if the drives are physically
identical, there is no difference in performance.

And all except the Seagate SATA drives are a bit of a kludge
currently, with a PATA/SATA bridge used. Not native SATA.

 

[Derek Baker]

That difference wasnt due to the interface standard, it was due
to differences in the physical drives, likely the number of platters.

Same number of platters; 2.5x the platter density.

Be careful with the connectors, they are a tad fragile compared with PATA.

So far, so good for me.

 

[Rod Speed]

Same number of platters; 2.5x the platter density.

Yeah, mine wasnt the clearest stated |-)

Thats the reason for the difference you saw.

So far, so good for me.

Yeah, its not too clear if some manufacturers are
choosing more robust physical connectors yet.