SATA disk, slow?

[Tomaz Koritnik]

Hi

I just bought computer with Gigabyte 7N400 PRO2 (nForce2 and SATA)
motherboard, Athlon XP2400+ and 80GB SATA 7200rpm Seagate Baracuda disk. I
also have one older 80GB Maxtor 7200rpm ATA100 disk. The problem is when I
test disk performance of both disks. I made program that writes and reads
to/from 200MB file but I also tested copying files with windows explorer.
SATA disk can write approx 35-40MB/s and read 17MB/s, while ATA100 does
40MB/s read, 21MB/s write. In all tests ATA 100 is little faster than SATA.
I can even see the progress bar going faster when reading/writing from/to
ATA 100 drive. Isn't this odd that ATA 100 is faster? Shouldn't SATA be much
faster than that? I use Windows XP with SP1 and I don't have fragmanted
disk. Shouldn't SATA write with 80MB/s or it's just my imagination?

regards
Tomaz

 

[Gerard Bok]

I just bought computer with Gigabyte 7N400 PRO2 (nForce2 and SATA)
motherboard, Athlon XP2400+ and 80GB SATA 7200rpm Seagate Baracuda disk.
In all tests ATA 100 is little faster than SATA.
Shouldn't SATA write with 80MB/s or it's just my imagination?

Sorry to say: yes, that's your imagination
You are very unlikely to generate and/or accept 80 MB/s on an
Athlon 2400+

What you are looking at is not ATA vs SATA performance but the
limits of your system and the fact that it is probably better
optimized for ATA than for SATA.

 

[kony]

Sorry to say: yes, that's your imagination
You are very unlikely to generate and/or accept 80 MB/s on an
Athlon 2400+

The "Athlon 2400+" part isn't really relevant though, rather that
particular motherboard has SATA via a controller sitting on the PCI bus,
an additional bottleneck and latency.

On the other hand, an SATA 7K2 Seagate drive simply isn't capable of
80MB/s no matter what the situation, unless you're only considering a very
small, cached access. Then again, the Maxtor drive may just be a faster
drive, period.

 

[Tomaz Koritnik]

Hi

How large are speed diferences with SATA for Seagate, Maxtor and WD
disks? Do you have any approximate rates for them?

regards
Tomaz

 

[VWWall]

Hi

How large are speed diferences with SATA for Seagate, Maxtor and WD
disks? Do you have any approximate rates for them?

The present SATA drives use essentialy the same mechanical drive
mechanism as the previous 7200 RPM ATA versions. Although the SATA
interface can pass 150MHz, no present drive can output at that rate.

The 10,000 RPM WD Raptor would have the highest output, but this is more
due to its rotational speed rather than to the SATA configuration.

SATA is still a good choice, if only for the smaller cables and lack of
master/slave confusion.

Virg Wall

 

[kony]

Hi

How large are speed diferences with SATA for Seagate, Maxtor and WD
disks? Do you have any approximate rates for them?

regards
Tomaz

Specific drive models would need to be considered, a Google search for
benchmarks (of those specific models) is the best way to find *current*
information, though of course you'd need to also consider the motherboard,
SATA implementation... An Intel board with Southbridge-integral SATA would
be the optimal interface with a seperate chip or PCI card being the worse,
usually.

 

[Trent©]

Hi

I just bought computer with Gigabyte 7N400 PRO2 (nForce2 and SATA)
motherboard, Athlon XP2400+ and 80GB SATA 7200rpm Seagate Baracuda disk. I
also have one older 80GB Maxtor 7200rpm ATA100 disk. The problem is when I
test disk performance of both disks. I made program that writes and reads
to/from 200MB file but I also tested copying files with windows explorer.
SATA disk can write approx 35-40MB/s and read 17MB/s, while ATA100 does
40MB/s read, 21MB/s write. In all tests ATA 100 is little faster than SATA.
I can even see the progress bar going faster when reading/writing from/to
ATA 100 drive. Isn't this odd that ATA 100 is faster? Shouldn't SATA be much
faster than that? I use Windows XP with SP1 and I don't have fragmanted
disk. Shouldn't SATA write with 80MB/s or it's just my imagination?

regards
Tomaz

You might see an increase with a 10,000 rpm drive...and/or with a
Promise or other quality controller.

Good luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent©

Dyslexics of the world ... UNTIE !