SATA vs IDE, Round 8

[Dave Zass]

Ok, I've googled and read a ton of information. And none of it points to a
clear choice and reason to support it.

I'm building a new box. Other than smaller SATA cables, there seems to be
no real technical difference on similar drives between the two. (ie 120Gb
IDE vs 120 GB SATA, 8MB cache). The prices are similar, the performance is
similar, etc for similar spec drives.

It looks like I may end up putting my op sys on a high RPM SATA drive and
having two IDE's in a RAID 1 for all else, as it will contain business data,
as well as other important personal stuff. Would I want to keep programs on
the SATA as well, or just the op sys? Would the IDE's be best for storage
only, or should programs be installed on those drives too?

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

 

[geezer]

Ok, I've googled and read a ton of information. And none of it points to a
clear choice and reason to support it.

I'm building a new box. Other than smaller SATA cables, there seems to be
no real technical difference on similar drives between the two. (ie 120Gb
IDE vs 120 GB SATA, 8MB cache). The prices are similar, the performance is
similar, etc for similar spec drives.

It looks like I may end up putting my op sys on a high RPM SATA drive and
having two IDE's in a RAID 1 for all else, as it will contain business data,
as well as other important personal stuff. Would I want to keep programs on
the SATA as well, or just the op sys? Would the IDE's be best for storage
only, or should programs be installed on those drives too?

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

I too await responses - I have a new MOBO with SATA and so far have
not felt inclined to use it.

 

[RBM]

I think SATA is just the next step, nothing dramatically different or
faster...yet... but with no masters and slaves and neat little cables, their
just easier to deal with

 

[Dave Zass]

I think SATA is just the next step, nothing dramatically different or

faster...yet... but with no masters and slaves and neat little cables,
their just easier to deal with

Which, assuming price and specs are the same, makes it a better choice for
building a new system, right?

 

[Zotin Khuma]

I too await responses - I have a new MOBO with SATA and so far have
not felt inclined to use it.

I'm no expert on this, but from what I've read, at this stage there's
no significant performance gain to be had by using SATA. It seems
to be a case of if your mobo has SATA, you might as well make
use of it. A SATA drive doesn't cost much more than a PATA drive,
and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've implemented
the latest technology, as well as gaining a few benchmark points.

 

[RBM]

When I built my first system, I used an Asus board with SATA raid on it. Not
only did I have no idea what is was,but I had to wait six months for the
first production Sata drives to come on the market. Unless it's a real dog,
or wicked expensive, I want a board to have all the future technology on it,
whether it becomes successful or not

 

[Roln]

The only thing I heard from a tech at the local computer store is.......a
SATA drive is less CPU intensive, allowing the CPU to do other tasks.
I just built a new system, using an ASUS MB and SATA drive. I can't see any
difference in performance from my old system.
As far as I'm concerned, it's another marketing scheme to get people to buy
a new hard drive!

 

[William W. Plummer]

The "tech" was just using big words to project an image of competence so
you will trust him and buy. The performance of a disk is set by the
rotational speed of the disk, not the interface.

 

[Curious George]

The only thing I heard from a tech at the local computer store is.......a
SATA drive is less CPU intensive, allowing the CPU to do other tasks.

A total load or crap.

"less CPU intensive" is basically a pre-"Ultra DMA" argument he
mangled.

As far as efficiency in more general terms SATA esp most SATA
implementations have greater overhead than PATA so it is less
efficient but not really in any noticeable terms including CPU usage.

The last place you should be getting information is a "tech at the
local computer store" anyway.

I just built a new system, using an ASUS MB and SATA drive. I can't see any
difference in performance from my old system.
As far as I'm concerned, it's another marketing scheme to get people to buy
a new hard drive!

Not so fast. SATA is a significant design improvement over PATA even
if it offers nothing to the home pc running a single disk.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Ok, I've googled and read a ton of information. And none of it points to
a clear choice and reason to support it.

I'm building a new box. Other than smaller SATA cables, there seems to be
no real technical difference on similar drives between the two. (ie 120Gb
IDE vs 120 GB SATA, 8MB cache). The prices are similar, the performance
is similar, etc for similar spec drives.

It looks like I may end up putting my op sys on a high RPM SATA drive and
having two IDE's in a RAID 1 for all else, as it will contain business
data, as well as other important personal stuff. Would I want to keep
programs on the SATA as well, or just the op sys? Would the IDE's be best
for storage only, or should programs be installed on those drives too?

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

SATA is supposed to provide a burst throughput of 150M compared to 133M for
PATA. But given that most implementations use the PCI bus it won't get that
much.
The cables are smaller but I consider the connectors flimsy compared to
PATA.
It all depends on what you want to do. I have SATA raid 0 to get that
little performance boost for video rendering. Given you are talking
business data (I'm assuming general office) you would probably be better of
with PATA at the moment.

 

[Q]

As far as I'm concerned, it's another marketing scheme to get people to buy
a new hard drive!

Agreed.
~Q

 

[Dave Zass]

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

SATA is supposed to provide a burst throughput of 150M compared to 133M
for PATA. But given that most implementations use the PCI bus it won't
get that much.
The cables are smaller but I consider the connectors flimsy compared to
PATA.
It all depends on what you want to do. I have SATA raid 0 to get that
little performance boost for video rendering. Given you are talking
business data (I'm assuming general office) you would probably be better
of with PATA at the moment.

Thanks for the practical and straight forward comment. My new system will
be my main business application and gaming system. I'm actually looking at
a AMD 64 3800+ now, instead of a 3500+. I'm gonna strip out the video card
( 6800 GT OC ) and sound card and just make a server out of my existing
Athlon 2700+ using the mobo's onboard sound and video.

The smaller SATA cables which equate to better airflow are also flimsy. In
a large, well cooled case, there is no benefit. The performance is similar
for both drives. Given that SATA is still a tad more expensive, IDE (PATA)
is still the answer. How about putting the op sys on a Raptor and using the
IDE's for applications, and regular data/storage? Any benefits or a waste
or money for a negligible performance increase? The server will hold all
my music (70Gb, I'm a musician) and my business applications and data. I'm
assuming I'll have an IDE or two in the server. My new main box will hold
other apps such as my games, regular browsing related stuff, etc. I'm
thinking about doing the Raptor in that system for the op sys ( Win XP
Pro ), with secondary IDE's for data.

Am I on the right track? Am I wasting my time and money even thinking about
SATA?

 

[William W. Plummer]

SATA is supposed to provide a burst throughput of 150M compared to 133M for
PATA.

I believe you are off by an order of magnitude.

Assume the disk has 32 sectors per track. Each sector has 512 data
bytes plus 8 header&trailer bytes for a total of 520 bytes per sector.

520 bytes/sectors * 32 sectors/track = 16,640 bytes/track or 133,120
bits per track.

7200 RPM = 120 RPS. 133,120 * 120 = 15,974,440 bits per second.

EIDE or S-ATA will be loafing.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

The smaller SATA cables which equate to better airflow are also flimsy.
In a large, well cooled case, there is no benefit....

The summary about SATA drives about 8 months ago in an article
in one of the PC mags was that SATA wouldn't be worth switching to
until the bus speeds increased to accomodate SATA's potentially
higher speeds. Until then, if ventilation is a critical, go to round cables.
I've been using 'em for about 18 months, and the only problem has
been a flaky connector on one cable that cost me $4 to replace, and
it was real easy to diagnose - the hard drive wasn't seen by the BIOS.
Otherwise, it's amazing how they seem to open up the inside of the
case. Each signal line is twisted with a ground line, and I got the
kind of cable that is shielded with aluminum braid pictured here:
http://svc.com/rc24hd2-sil.html They normally come with pull tabs
on the connectors, and the cables come in various lengths and
with one and two device connectors.

*TimDaniels*

 

[/mel/]

I believe you are off by an order of magnitude.

Assume the disk has 32 sectors per track. Each sector has 512 data
bytes plus 8 header&trailer bytes for a total of 520 bytes per sector.

520 bytes/sectors * 32 sectors/track = 16,640 bytes/track or 133,120
bits per track.

7200 RPM = 120 RPS. 133,120 * 120 = 15,974,440 bits per second.

EIDE or S-ATA will be loafing.

In other words, 2MBytes/sec, which is *way* under what modern drives are
capable of. Incidentally, indicated drive parameters are worthless for the
purposes of such calculations these days - they may bear no resemblence to
the actual drive geometry as the drive does the translation internally (the
reason for this is historical and related to BIOS and OS limitations).

 

[William W. Plummer]

William W. Plummer wrote:




In other words, 2MBytes/sec, which is *way* under what modern drives are
capable of. Incidentally, indicated drive parameters are worthless for the
purposes of such calculations these days - they may bear no resemblence to
the actual drive geometry as the drive does the translation internally (the
reason for this is historical and related to BIOS and OS limitations).

No. Modern drives only require 1.6MB which is way below what the
channel can handle.

Yes, there is a "Linear Block Assignment" in drives and BIOS these days.
But when you get down to the physical disk, there are still cylinder,
heads and sectors. The fact that you give each sector a linear address
does not effect the transfer rate calculation.

 

[/mel/]

No. Modern drives only require 1.6MB which is way below what the
channel can handle.

Maybe we're talking at crossed-purposes. Certainly the interface specs these
days are way above what the mechanical limitations of the drive dictate, as
far as sustained data transfer is concerned. Of course cache has some impact
on this. Nevertheless, my bog-standard SATA drive can transfer from
56MByte/sec (outside edge) to 30MByte/sec (inside edge) from the platters,
which is 15 to 30 times your 16Mbit/sec.

Current SATA (generation 1) is 1.5Gbit/sec, so about 200MByte/sec.

Of course that's leaving aside assorted overheads.

 

[VWWall]

No. Modern drives only require 1.6MB which is way below what the
channel can handle.

Yes, there is a "Linear Block Assignment" in drives and BIOS these days.
But when you get down to the physical disk, there are still cylinder,
heads and sectors. The fact that you give each sector a linear address
does not effect the transfer rate calculation.

Read the spec for a modern drive! (Seagate ST380013, 80MB, 2 heads,
single platter, 7200 RPM.)

BPI (KBITS PER INCH)....up to 595,000
SUSTAINED TRANSFER RATE (MB/sec) ...up to 58

Still less than even the ATA/100, but way above the 1.6MB you calculate!
There are 156,301,488 sectors on this drive on one platter. You do the
math.

Some reasons for the higher rate. More sectors/track; zones allow for
more at the larger radii. More efficient encoding (EPRML 16/17 ZBR).
More magnetic transitions/inch.

 

[Meticulous]

SATA is the best there is, I have 2 raptor 36 gigs on stripe (raid 0)
and 1gb ram with a 3400+ amd 64-bit... SATA ROCKS IDE's World...
HARD... Reason one... I used to do IDE RAID 0 on two 7200rpm drives
and installed windows xp in around 15 min.... now I use SATA on
stripe and install win xp... from the blue format screen to the click
here to continue dialog in 6 mins beat that with IDE... YEAH...
SATA ROCKS... NO GIMMICKS AND NO BS... it will rule IDE and SATA2 is
just another step... the MB comapnies need to devise another layout
strategy in order for us to utilize the possibilities of the SATA or
SATA2 at it's full capacity. Im through and I am back to my
system...

 

[Veritech]

quick question
is the performance difference between 2 36gb raptors and a single 74gb
raptor worth the increase in price.