SATA... hows it work?

Ransure · Post by **Ransure** » March 31, 2005, 1:16 am

So, Im looking into a new MB and was also thinking of getting a SATA controler onboard, IIRC SATA is way faster than IDE... how many drives can I get on a single controller? Im thinking of 4 250gb SATA drives, but can I also fit a CD drive and DL DVDR on the same board normally?...

Yea, I know I could research it... but being lazy is so much more fun

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 31, 2005, 2:08 am

Not sure it's that much faster as the present time...

I have 2 SATA drives at the moment. Mine supports 4 but I think that's in a RAID configuration. Never bothered to look really. Also have A CD and DVD burner no problem.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 31, 2005, 2:54 am

Ransure wrote:So, Im looking into a new MB and was also thinking of getting a SATA controler onboard, IIRC SATA is way faster than IDE... how many drives can I get on a single controller? Im thinking of 4 250gb SATA drives, but can I also fit a CD drive and DL DVDR on the same board normally?...

Yea, I know I could research it... but being lazy is so much more fun

SATA supports one drive per connection (not like two for IDE) so for 4 HDs you'd need 4 SATA motherboard connections. You can always hook your CD and DVD stuff up to IDE.

I have tons of 250GBs (6 of them all IDE) but the only speed drive that's important is your apps/OS drive so I have a tiny 36GB HD SATA 10K Raptor for that and Windows loads in less than 8-12 seconds or something ridiculous.

I was able to zone in EQ bofore I even hit the edge of the current zone it was so fast. (it's true!) ...well, it was pretty damn fast. That had to do with combination of memory, cpu and drive speed though.

Good luck!

Breagen · Post by **Breagen** » March 31, 2005, 3:15 am

In the interest of avoiding further posts I have a somewhat related question!

I'm looking to add another hard drive to my computer but in the year since I built it I've forgotten a lot. I would be adding an IDE drive but I see lots of like ATA100 or ATA133 etc and I can't remember which is best and whether they are all compatible with each other... Any reminders on the standard would be greatly appreciated!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 31, 2005, 3:39 am

Breagen wrote:In the interest of avoiding further posts I have a somewhat related question!

I'm looking to add another hard drive to my computer but in the year since I built it I've forgotten a lot. I would be adding an IDE drive but I see lots of like ATA100 or ATA133 etc and I can't remember which is best and whether they are all compatible with each other... Any reminders on the standard would be greatly appreciated!

ATA133 > ATA100

but that's not a big deal. Just be sure to get a 7200rpm drive with 8mb or more cache. That will make more of a difference in real life speed than the ATA rating.

Kargyle · Post by **Kargyle** » March 31, 2005, 9:11 am

Speed increase from ATA133 to ATA100 is nominal at best. There's a reason most vendors don't even bother to make an ATA133 drive. Another thing to be aware of: You are only going to get ATA133 transfer speeds on the Master channel. Any device on the Slave channel is automatically forced down one step in transfer mode. So an ATA133 drive on the Master channel is going to tranfer in UDMA Mode 6, while on the Slave channel it will transfer at UDMA Mode 5.

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » March 31, 2005, 11:16 am

I recently rebuilt and went with SATA for my main drive. Definitely a noticeble difference on program loading along with OS loading. To put it in perspective, I moved up from a p4 2.4ghz at 400mhz FSB to a 3.0ghz p4 with 800fsb and new motherboard, and the old drive was a 2mb buffered 7200rpm IDE.

So I'm sure it was a combo of the three....but it was very noticeable.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » March 31, 2005, 2:07 pm

so there are no IRQ conflicts or anything if you use SATA and IDE/EIDE interfaces in the same machine? Interesting...been looking at this and I may get a new mobo/CPU just to take advantage of this.

Kargyle · Post by **Kargyle** » March 31, 2005, 2:21 pm

If you are using Windows 2000 or newer you shouldn't have any problems. If you are planning to use Linux then you may run into issues depending on what distro you use.

IDE's days are numbered anyway. SATA Optical drives will be out before the end of the year, and Intel's next chipsets will, according to them, not have any IDE channels at all. It is possible that they will push back one more generation, but I don't see them doing more than that. Other than supporting older systems, I would expect to see IDE more or less vanish in the next 18 to 24 monthes.

Janx · Post by **Janx** » March 31, 2005, 2:39 pm

Running benches using Sisoft Sandra shows a pretty large difference in perforamce between my 7200 IDE and 7200 SATA drives. If your gonna get a HD go SATA, less clutter due to smaller cables regardless of performance. Also most MB's come with 4-6 SATA connectors now so no loss if you wanted more drives.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » March 31, 2005, 3:40 pm

And a 10 year old SCSI device is still faster, especially on sustained reads\writes like you get loading games, copying big files, etc..

A SCSI controller and "system pull" drives via pricewatch or whatever would be cheaper and faster than buying an SATA capable MB and drives. Assuming better drive I\O is the main reason you were upgrading.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 31, 2005, 5:17 pm

Tenuvil wrote:so there are no IRQ conflicts or anything if you use SATA and IDE/EIDE interfaces in the same machine? Interesting...been looking at this and I may get a new mobo/CPU just to take advantage of this.

I haven't had any conflicts running IDE and SATA drives together. Any MB bios should let you set the HD boot order to your preference.

One of my computers has a SATA and two IDEs in it. The IDEs are in a Master/Slave setup and the other IDE is used for a DVD recorder. The DVD may even be a slave of one of the IDE HDs and I may have three master HDs 2 IDE, 1 SATA. Who knows...whatever it is, it works with no problems.

Again, the key drive to have as fast as possible is your OS/Application HD. Your storage drives don't matter that much unless you're transferring DVD images or somethng and that's only going to be a small time saver when you're not talking about anything external.

My terastation thingy is hooked up via Gigabit and I don't notice any speed issues for normal use. (playing movies, etc)

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 31, 2005, 5:19 pm

Aabidano wrote:And a 10 year old SCSI device is still faster, especially on sustained reads\writes like you get loading games, copying big files, etc..

A SCSI controller and "system pull" drives via pricewatch or whatever would be cheaper and faster than buying an SATA capable MB and drives. Assuming better drive I\O is the main reason you were upgrading.

Times have changes aabinano

In a separate review, Custom PC magazine compared the WD Raptor 74-GB drive to a 15,000-RPM Seagate SCSI drive, with the Western Digital drive outperforming the competitor in a Paint Shop Pro imaging editing test.

Your old scsi (highly doubtful it's even 15K) isn't a match for new 10K raptor SATAs. And SATA is cheaper.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » April 4, 2005, 9:50 am

Winnow wrote:Times have changes aabinano

I keep hearing that, and after reading a bit I'll grant my 10 year old SCSI II device would lose against the Raptors in many tests.

Thinking I'd be proven wrong I looked through recent HW reviews and that was the only one showing the latest SATA winning VS SCSI devices, except on price. That can be gotten around for home use if you're willing to shop around. Even PC centric Tom's HW guide still showed SCSI being significantly faster. Due to a number of factors, processor overhead, device chaining, perception of reliability, etc.. SATA doesn't look like it's going to gain market share except for the low end in the server segment for some time to come.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 4, 2005, 12:39 pm

Aabidano wrote: Thinking I'd be proven wrong I looked through recent HW reviews and that was the only one showing the latest SATA winning VS SCSI devices, except on price. That can be gotten around for home use if you're willing to shop around.

Interesting. So you can get a 250GB SCSI HD AND controller for about 130.00? Link pls!

masteen · Post by **masteen** » April 4, 2005, 6:12 pm

FUCK SCSI!!!

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » April 4, 2005, 10:20 pm

Winnow wrote:Interesting. So you can get a 250GB SCSI HD AND controller for about 130.00? Link pls!

Nope, but you get what you pay for as well

*Edit - Your not going to get one of the raptors for $130 either, unless you want a 36Gb model. Given the cost of the drives and a new MB to support them, I still think it's a viable alternative if that's the reason he's looking at upgrading. The cost of a U320 controller and a 74Gb drive is less than the cost of a 74Gb Raptor. And it's not like the controller would be worn out and need replaced when he does eventually replace the MB.

/shrug

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 5, 2005, 1:16 am

Someone is living in the past.. It's time to move on!

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » April 5, 2005, 11:26 am

i gave up on SCSI when i couldnt figure out how to mount my QUAD SPEED CD rom that went through a SCSI adaptor on my soundblaster on my Compaq 486 during a Debian install (CD was my installation media).

but that PC got a lot of neglect sitting next to my EQ box

Kargyle · Post by **Kargyle** » April 5, 2005, 11:37 am

SCSI isn't going anywhere.

If you are looking for the ultimate performance regardless of pice SCSI is still your solution. And for high access file servers SCSI is the only solution, simply because SCSI removes so much prcocess overhead from the system.

SATA has deffinately narrowed the speed gap between ATA and SCSI, but SCSI is still quite a bit faster. However, I personally think that SATA is a much better value and gives you more bang for the buck.

*Edit*

Oh, and one thing on the Raptor drive. It is only as fast as it is because a lot of the internal design of it is SCSI. It is the kind of weird SCSI/ATA/SATA hybrid. Where all of the other vendors just grabbed an existing ATA drive, and slapped a Marvel bridge chip on it, WD (for the Raptor anyway) grabbed a SCSI drive, and made some engineering changes to make it work in SATA. I know some of that work involved integrating certain ATA components and controllers.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 5, 2005, 1:28 pm

Kargyle wrote:
*Edit*

Oh, and one thing on the Raptor drive. It is only as fast as it is because a lot of the internal design of it is SCSI. It is the kind of weird SCSI/ATA/SATA hybrid. Where all of the other vendors just grabbed an existing ATA drive, and slapped a Marvel bridge chip on it, WD (for the Raptor anyway) grabbed a SCSI drive, and made some engineering changes to make it work in SATA. I know some of that work involved integrating certain ATA components and controllers.

Does the Raptor connect to the SATA port? Then it's a SATA drive!

I'll have none of this mumbo jumbo about the inner workings! HD's are categorized by their connection type. Anything internal is a free for all as long as it functions.

The last SCSI drive I bought was a 40mb (not GB) external drive for my Mac Plus for $550.00. O U T R A G E O U S!

*~*stragi*~* · Post by ***~*stragi*~*** » April 5, 2005, 1:56 pm

most sata boards come with 4 connectors anyway don't they?
it's pretty sweet because you can have more optical drives with sata hd's!
i demand 4 dvd burners!

VeeshanVault

SATA... hows it work?

SATA... hows it work?

Re: SATA... hows it work?

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