remove IDE, install SATA ?

[Talal Itani]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200 RPM,
the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my computer
faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard supports
Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the IDE drives
and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz,
overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

Thanks
Talal Itani

 

[Noozer]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200
RPM, the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my
computer faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard
supports Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the
IDE drives and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4,
2.4 GHz, overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

No.

How much memory is installed? How often do you defrag? How much junk do you
have loading up at startup?

 

[kony]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200 RPM,
the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my computer
faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard supports
Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the IDE drives
and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz,
overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

Thanks
Talal Itani

No, in general you won't get a significant performance
increase moving from PATA to SATA, BUT you might get an
increase by replacing an old drive with a new drive
(depending on what it's replaced with) regardless of whether
the new drive is SATA or PATA... although the fastest PC
drive (excluding SCSI) is a Raptor that only comes in SATA
format.

Since your system isn't terribly old, you shouldn't expect a
substantial benefit from a typical budget drive unless the
present one was very fragmented or nearly full. Thus I
would think for enough of a performance improvement to make
it worthwhile you would get the Raptor.

It may not directly improve boot times enough though, that
is a function of how much is loading at boot-time, and
applications can depend on other factors as well like how
much memory the system has. In other words, it may take a
few seconds to load some applications while the file access
time is not what is slowing them down alone (there's more
than one bottleneck).

If you are thinking of applications that are reloading after
the system had ran for awhile, add more memory so there is
more persistent filecaching.

 

[Talal Itani]

No.

How much memory is installed? How often do you defrag? How much junk do
you have loading up at startup?

I have 1 GB of RAM, planning to upgrade to 1.5 GB. My PC is overclocked. I
defrag regularly. I have some junk loading at startup.

 

[Ken Maltby]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200
RPM, the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my
computer faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard
supports Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the
IDE drives and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4,
2.4 GHz, overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

Thanks
Talal Itani

If you are still talking Raptors or a striped RAID configuration,
then Yes. Just going to SATA from IDE, then No.

Luck;
Ken

 

[Joel]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200 RPM,
the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my computer
faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard supports
Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the IDE drives
and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz,
overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

Thanks
Talal Itani

Well, I am pretty new to SATA and matter fact I have only one SATA but I
am still too lazy to open the case yet so I use it as external drive
instead. But from what I understand that IDE and SATA use 2 separated
channels/connectors so.

- You can have up to 4 IDE devices and about 2 SATA devices

- You can either keep or remove any of your IDE device if you wish which
doesn't effect the SATA channel.

- The speed of your system may depend on what type of application you run,
faster drive may help little with copying/reading/writting etc. or it won't
make your application runs faster (unless it reads/writes often and
especially large file which won't happen often).

- On most systems, *if* you already have plenty of disk space for swapping
then MEMORY can help speeding thing up. For most everage people who just
use system to run word processing and surf the web then about 1GB would be
fine, but if you have some heavy aps which can take advantage of memory then
2-3GB would be the ideal. Memory is so cheap these days so I would say go
for 2GB (and go for 1GB instead of 2 512MB to save the memory slot)

 

[Alex Mizrahi]

(message (Hello 'Talal)
(you :wrote n '(Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:36:30 GMT))
(

TI> I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200
TI> RPM, the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my
TI> computer faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My
TI> motherboard supports Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if
TI> I remove the IDE drives and install a Serial ATA drive instead?

replacing old drive with a new one can increase performance, since newer
drives are faster (higher density etc).
if it's same model, PATA and SATA are aprox same speed, but in some cases
SATA can be a bit faster. if you read from both drives simultaneously, you
might hit IDE bus speed limitation.
SATA also supports NCQ, that can be a benefit for multithreaded disk access
is some cases, and i think it can optimize boot time, since on boot lots of
stuf gets loaded in parallel.
however NCQ is not enabled by default -- you need to enable AHCI or RAID
mode on controller (in compatibility mode you won't see NCQ), and load
drivers for the controller.

)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"I am everything you want and I am everything you need")

 

[GT]

Hello,

I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200
RPM, the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my
computer faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My motherboard
supports Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference if I remove the
IDE drives and install a Serial ATA drive instead? My PC has a Pentium 4,
2.4 GHz, overclocked to 2.7 GHz.

Its more the age of the drive, rather than the interface type that would
make a difference. A newer drive would be alot faster than your old IBM
5000rpm, but I have just bought a new Western Digital 7200 rpm drive and it
is faster than my existing Samsung 7200 rpm drive. The revolution speed is
only a small part of the story. Go to you device manager and tell us the
model number of the WD drive and we will tell you how old it is and whether
it is worth upgrading for a performance increase.

The interface discussion is not really relevant yet. IDE (or PATA) interface
can move 133MB/s and SATA I can move 150MB/s. The newer SATA II can shift
300MB/s, but the fastest hard drives only manage a transfer rate of
60-70MB/s. So you could run 2 of the latest drives (if you can find PATA
versions) on 1 IDE channel and they would only just fill its capacity when
both running flat out!

Another point is you use the words remove and replace - you can keep your
existing drives and use a newer SATA drive in addition. Use your existing
drives as space for backups, or data files, downloads etc.

If you make the new drive the system drive, then a clean install of XP, or a
couple of hours running through a few 'clean-up' apps would probably speed
things up anyway - in fact why not try that now on your existing drive and
see if it speeds things up considerably.

 

[GT]

(message (Hello 'Talal)
(you :wrote n '(Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:36:30 GMT))
(

TI> I have in my PC two IDE drives, the first is a Western Digital at 7200
TI> RPM, the second is an older IBM at 5000 RPM. I would like to make my
TI> computer faster to boot, and faster to load applications. My
TI> motherboard supports Serial ATA. Will I see a noticeable difference
if
TI> I remove the IDE drives and install a Serial ATA drive instead?

replacing old drive with a new one can increase performance, since newer
drives are faster (higher density etc).
if it's same model, PATA and SATA are aprox same speed, but in some cases
SATA can be a bit faster. if you read from both drives simultaneously, you
might hit IDE bus speed limitation.

Unlikely - ATA133 can handle 133MB/s. The fastest Raptor can manage 87MB/s.
The fastest IDE drive on the list can manage 75.8MB/s. If you put 2 of these
on the same channel and tried to use them at the same time they would
require 151.6MB/s and be limited to 133MB/s, but this is not really
relevant - you would have them on different channels. Here's a performance
chart:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&mod
el1=677&model2=367&chart=33

or

http://tinyurl.com/yugr2w

 

[Talal Itani]

Its more the age of the drive, rather than the interface type that would
make a difference. A newer drive would be alot faster than your old IBM
5000rpm, but I have just bought a new Western Digital 7200 rpm drive and
it is faster than my existing Samsung 7200 rpm drive. The revolution speed
is only a small part of the story. Go to you device manager and tell us
the model number of the WD drive and we will tell you how old it is and
whether it is worth upgrading for a performance increase.

The interface discussion is not really relevant yet. IDE (or PATA)
interface can move 133MB/s and SATA I can move 150MB/s. The newer SATA II
can shift 300MB/s, but the fastest hard drives only manage a transfer rate
of 60-70MB/s. So you could run 2 of the latest drives (if you can find
PATA versions) on 1 IDE channel and they would only just fill its capacity
when both running flat out!

Another point is you use the words remove and replace - you can keep your
existing drives and use a newer SATA drive in addition. Use your existing
drives as space for backups, or data files, downloads etc.

If you make the new drive the system drive, then a clean install of XP, or
a couple of hours running through a few 'clean-up' apps would probably
speed things up anyway - in fact why not try that now on your existing
drive and see if it speeds things up considerably.

Thank you.

My C drive is: WDCWD1600JB-00EVA9
The older slower IBM drive is: IC35L040AVER07-0
I have an external drive, USB.

Both internal drives are connected to the same IDE cable. I wonder of the
slower IBM drive slows down the faster WD drive. I rarely us the IBM drive.

 

[GT]

Thank you.

My C drive is: WDCWD1600JB-00EVA9
The older slower IBM drive is: IC35L040AVER07-0
I have an external drive, USB.

Both internal drives are connected to the same IDE cable. I wonder of the
slower IBM drive slows down the faster WD drive. I rarely us the IBM
drive.

You would 'potentially' notice any slow down when shifting files from 1 disk
to another. The convention is to put 2 hard drives on different channels,
but you may not notice any difference with those 2 drives.

Your WD drive can probably manage around 55MB/s read transfer rate (1 of
many figures), so a more recent drive would potentially be faster at 65-70
MB/s, but I don't know if the speed improvement would be perceptable. Also,
like I said, this is only 1 performance figure and there are other things to
consider - noise, heat, power consumption, cost. Ideally you should get a
couple of large Raptor disks in a RAID, but that is hot, expensive and
noisy - What is your goal/budget etc for upgrading?

 

[Talal Itani]

You would 'potentially' notice any slow down when shifting files from 1
disk to another. The convention is to put 2 hard drives on different
channels, but you may not notice any difference with those 2 drives.

Your WD drive can probably manage around 55MB/s read transfer rate (1 of
many figures), so a more recent drive would potentially be faster at 65-70
MB/s, but I don't know if the speed improvement would be perceptable.
Also, like I said, this is only 1 performance figure and there are other
things to consider - noise, heat, power consumption, cost. Ideally you
should get a couple of large Raptor disks in a RAID, but that is hot,
expensive and noisy - What is your goal/budget etc for upgrading?

I am considering Raptor and/or RAID a new PC I will be setting up. Were you
referring to RAID 0 or 1?

 

[GT]

I am considering Raptor and/or RAID a new PC I will be setting up. Were
you referring to RAID 0 or 1?

I don't know enough about RAID options to advise you here, but the answer to
your question depends on the desired use for the system - outright speed,
storage capacity, reliability, (plus noise, cost, heat, power) etc. Best bet
here is to Google on RAID and read around the subject to see which setup
best matches what you want.