SATA drives-- are they faster than IDE/ATA?

[Beowulf]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
doing digital art, etc)?

 

[Chris Hill]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
doing digital art, etc)?

Unless you're talking a 10,000 rpm drive, the speed difference will be
insignificant. It doesn't matter how fast you can transfer data
unless the majority of the data is already in the cache. I'd buy sata
just to reduce the cable clutter, and probably will when my ide drive
quits, but not before.

 

[Dave]

Unless you're talking a 10,000 rpm drive, the speed difference will be
insignificant. It doesn't matter how fast you can transfer data
unless the majority of the data is already in the cache. I'd buy sata
just to reduce the cable clutter, and probably will when my ide drive
quits, but not before.

Even a 10K RPM drive can't read/write data fast enough to overwhelm a IDE100
speed data connection. So SATA will not make a drive faster, all by itself.
As for buying SATA to reduce cable clutter, I'm not sure that's such a good
idea.

My buddy bought a brand new HP media center PC recently. I helped him
upgrade the power supply so that he could upgrade the video card (long story
boils down to HP engineers thought it would be a GOOD idea to match a
PCI-Express-INcompatible power supply with a PCI-Express capable mainboard)

Anyway, while replacing the power supply, I had to snip a plastic wire tie
(zip tie) to get one of the power connectors off of a SATA hard drive. I
thought that HP was just being overly careful in securing the power
connection. BUT, when I went to connect the new power supply to that SATA
hard drive, I realized that there was NOTHING holding the SATA power
connector to the hard drive. The electrical contacts on the power connector
were just SITTING on the electrical contacts on the hard drive. This was a
brand new OCZ brand (extremely high quality) power supply, so it wasn't like
the connector was a cheapie or anything.

I remember thinking, I'm not impressed at all with this SATA stuff. I had
to dig up some zip ties and kind of worm them in/around some circuit cards
so that I would have some way to secure the power connector for the SATA
hard drive. That wasn't easy, as the drive bays were on rails, so I had to
route zip ties THROUGH components, rather than around them. (or else the
drives wouldn't fit back in the case)

Basically, I think you're better off buying rounded IDE cables, if your goal
is to reduce cable clutter. -Dave

 

[cliff]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit
would I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA
drive, what is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed
often (like images if doing digital art, etc)?

I was just going to ask that question myself. I recently added two SATA
drives to a fairly new System with XP Pro already installed. I am still not
sure if they are configured for maximum speed but they are about equal to
the PATA drives I have been using all along. I don't know of a good way
other then using Pinnacle Studio 9 as an indicator. That application will
test each drive and report back read/write speeds. They may not be accurate
but are consistent and I feel can be used as a gauge. I have installed a
Western Digital 75 Gig 10,000 RPM Raptor as C: drive and a Maxtor 7200 RPM
300 Gig SATA 150 as second SATA drive. System drive on SATA port 0 while
other SATA is port 1. I have one Maxtor 200G PATA set as Master on IDE0 and
DVD as the slave. I also have IDE Promise card in PCI slot. The Raptor
tested 122.8 MB/s with HDDTach
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach and Pinnacle
S9 reported 65,671 Kbytes/s read and 70,549 Kbytes/s write. The Maxtor 300
Gig 7200 RPM SATA drive reported 134.5 MB/s w/HDDTach and 60,991 Kbytes/s
read and 66,505 Kbytes/s write with Studio-9. But like I said I don't think
this is in any way an accurate benchmark it does seem to be a real time
indication that there is no big screaming difference.

I hope someone else can comment and maybe point to some other testing SW or
point out any misconceptions or misconfigurations I may have.


Cliff

 

[kony]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
doing digital art, etc)?

SATA is an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one. It
offers more potential and ingeneral is as good or better
than PATA when all else is equal.

When all else isn't equal, for example if the SATA
controller were on a 32bit, 33MHz PCI bus, that will
bottleneck it to be worse than PATA through a southbridge
controller, or very similar if both were on the PCI bus. In
the most modern systems, SATA is not on the PCI bus but
sometimes a 2nd controller might be. The specific hardware
would need considered.

When an SATA and (P)ATA hard drive are the same internally,
these internals being the far most significant bottleneck,
there isn't much performance difference between the two. It
can matter more whether you want the most forward-supported
interface (SATA) or better support for emergency situations
(for example if your motherboard fails and you have an SATA
drive but no other SATA controller-equipped gear, you have
no way to get the files off, while with a PATA drive there
are tons of older systems and external enclosures you might
already have- or maybe you don't/won't have them, we can
only generalize since we don't know these variables).

Some high-performance drives are only available in SATA
format (WD Raptor), so that alone makes SATA more useful IF
you wanted to pay the premium for lower seek times... would
be most useful for an OS or database drive.

In general for a new system, an SATA drive is a good choice
but in the long run it may not matter much, performance-wise
the specific drive you choose makes more difference than
which interface.

 

[GrahamH]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
doing digital art, etc)?

If your buiding a new system then just go for SATA and if the Motherboard
supports SATA2 then go with that.
I cant see any reason not to go with SATA when the motherboard supports it,
and use the old parallel ide for CDROM.
At least you get rid of the old cables and master/slave jumpers. Easier to
setup and the price difference is minimal.
As for performance benefits then they are not great enough to worry about,
just go with SATA.
The old parallel ATA will disappear before long like the parallel/serial
ports have mostly gone.
regards,
Graham...

 

[Guest]

If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

 

[Beowulf]

If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

Interesting, good to know.

 

[Larry Roberts]

If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

That just made up my mind. ATA133 it is. Screw SATA.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

That just made up my mind. ATA133 it is. Screw SATA.

What he meant to say was that you need to load the SATA
*driveRs* from a floppy during WinXP installation. Is it so hard
to just copy those files to a CD or to make a slipstreamed
installation CD with the SATA drivers included in it? Think
ahead to your next hard drive upgrade.

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

What he meant to say was that you need to load the SATA
*driveRs* from a floppy during WinXP installation. Is it so hard
to just copy those files to a CD or to make a slipstreamed
installation CD with the SATA drivers included in it? Think
ahead to your next hard drive upgrade.

Hard, no, but a bit senseless to go to that effort instead
of just normally equipping a system - with a floppy drive.
Nobody has to "like" floppy drives, but nobody has to like
resistor "R4" on a motherboard either even though it might
be kinda important to have.

Seems at some point people mistakenly assumed that because
OEM systems started shipping without floppy, that this meant
it was a good idea. Nope, they did that primarily because
it was a few dollars cheaper and they had regularly used
restoration CDs which are bootable so there wasn't ever this
normal event of having drive controller files on floppy.

 

[Dale Brisket]

I really know little about SATA drives. Always used ATA/IDE/EIDE hard
drives. Going to build a new system soon-- what performance benefit would
I gain, if any, adding a SATA drive? And if I did add a SATA drive, what
is it best used for-- the OS, or data files accessed often (like images if
doing digital art, etc)?

My 74 GB WD Raptor is easily the fastest drive I've owned. It is a 10K RPM
drive, which likely accounts for more of its perfomance superiority than the
fact that its SATA II, but for a boot drive, it's da shit.

 

[ToolPackinMama]

FWIW, I recently installed a SATA drive, and installing WinXP/SP2
(slipstreamed) was totally uncomplicated.

 

[kony]

FWIW, I recently installed a SATA drive, and installing WinXP/SP2
(slipstreamed) was totally uncomplicated.

Sure, it isn't complicated... but it did have to be
slipstreamed. All those little "easy" things add up.

 

[cliff]

My 74 GB WD Raptor is easily the fastest drive I've owned. It is a
10K RPM drive, which likely accounts for more of its perfomance
superiority than the fact that its SATA II, but for a boot drive,
it's da shit.

What do you use as a benchmark? From what I can tell my Maxtor 300Gig PATA
is faster than my 74Gig Raptor using HAD track and a read/write test with
Pinnacle Studio 9.

 

[Bob Davis]

If your buiding a new system then just go for SATA and if the Motherboard
supports SATA2 then go with that.
I cant see any reason not to go with SATA when the motherboard supports
it, and use the old parallel ide for CDROM.
At least you get rid of the old cables and master/slave jumpers. Easier to
setup and the price difference is minimal.
As for performance benefits then they are not great enough to worry about,
just go with SATA.
The old parallel ATA will disappear before long like the parallel/serial
ports have mostly gone.

I think this is true, sometimes. I have two Raptors in a RAID0 array taking
up my on-chip SATA RAID controller (ICH5R), plus three other devices using
PATA. The mobo has one extra SATA RAID controller, but it isn't part of the
chipset, which means initializing it at boot-up and taking an extra few
seconds for that process.

For that reason I am using PATA for my large D: drive (storage and backup),
and it is plenty fast for this task.

 

[Bob Davis]

If you just have SATA drives, WinXP install becomes a pain as the
install disc (for SP1 at least) does not recognise SATA drives. You
need the SATA drives on a floppy - since my PCs don't have floppy
drives, my last XP re-install was a little on the complicated side!

This isn't always the case. With many motherboards, including the Asus
P4C800 and Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (both having the Intel 875 chipset), a SATA
drive will install without drivers because SATA is routed through IDE by
default. I just built a system with the above Asus mobo and a SATA boot
drive, and there were no drivers installed, Device Manager showing only IDE
controllers activated.

 

[Bob Davis]

Sure, it isn't complicated... but it did have to be
slipstreamed. All those little "easy" things add up.

I think by "slipstreamed" he is referring to the SP2 install, where SP2 is
slipstreamed into an original SP1 (or earlier) XP disk. A newer SP2 install
disk should allow a SATA install without issues, even earlier if the
motherboard is routing SATA through the IDE controller, which mine does by
default.

Even if drivers are required, which they would be for some installations
with non-on-chip controllers (Promise, Silicon Image, etc.), you would only
need to do it once, and it isn't rocket science. Just put them on a floppy
or CD and to the f6 routine early in the install process.

 

[Bob Davis]

What do you use as a benchmark? From what I can tell my Maxtor 300Gig PATA
is faster than my 74Gig Raptor using HAD track and a read/write test with
Pinnacle Studio 9.

Try using Sandra or HDTach. That Raptor should beat the PATA in all
categories (read, write, seek, and burst).

 

[kony]

Try using Sandra or HDTach. That Raptor should beat the PATA in all
categories (read, write, seek, and burst).

Not necessarily, the larger PATA drives make up a lot in
linear speed due to their higher platter density. Combine
that with the fact that anyone doing large jobs on an system
with a single drive, or otherwise a large % of the space on
the drive used, will find the Raptor has then been reading
and writing to the slower end of the platter. Sandra and
HDTach, being synthetic benchmarks, are not necessarily
accurate for all scenarios. That's not to take away from
the Raptor, it's a good choice for the OS or smaller data
sets, but can't replace a larger drive well for large linear
work... so as always the best power-user config is to have
at least 2 drives in the system.