Economics of SATA hard drive

[Warra]

Consider getting a PATA drive of whatever size fits your needs.
When its time to move to another motherboard, look for one that
will support the hard drive. If it only has one PATA interface, it
may be possible to use it for both the hard drive and a DVD drive.
Since DVDs typically runs at 66mhz, the hard drive would probably
run at that reduced bandwidth. BUT the good news is that hard
drives rarely transfer data any faster than that except for burst
from cache.

I already have five or six PATA drives I run simultaneously. I use a
PCI PATA extender but I prefer to avoid drives on the PCI PATA card
as I get:

No SMART reporting.
Can't boot from a partition on one of them.
Drive & partition seq numbers are different in BIOS, OS & in utils.
Slower overall booting due to PCI card checks.
etc

I don't really want to have two PCI PATA cards (my old one and a new
one) on a new mobo that supports only one P-IDE port.

 

[Warra]

Find a cheaper PCI SATA adaptor on ebay.

ebay? No thank you. I find it goes like this on ebay:



£1 for the PCI SATA card.
£5 postage.
£5 to £10 for the time to complete a transaction and swap emails and
check credentials and confirm goods against description.
£10 to chase spotty-faced wanker selling the item about delays.
£10 for angst, grief and general wot-****ing-mess-this-is.

And even then you find the card prolly does not work (whatever price
is asked). "I'll give you your £1 back then mate and pay the postage
- you can't say fairer than that." **** off sonny, after all the
hassle I just want a working card.

 

[Warra]

To the rescue!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822998008

Cool.

But after all this discussion, you have forgotten the first 4 words of
my OP:

"Am in the UK".

 

[Daniel James]

Don't want to get Parallel IDE (PATA) because newer mobos will
support only SATA.

I doubt very much that there will be any motherboards that support SATA but
not PATA within the useful working life of any disk drive you buy today,
and I certainly don't think the majority of boards will be SATA only for
quite some time. Even if such boards were to become common you will still
be able to use one with PATA drives via a PCI (or PCIe, or whatever the
future may bring) interface card.

PATA drives are still slightly cheaper than an equivalent SATA drive, and
while SATA connection may be faster than PATA neither will be saturated by
data coming from one of today's disk drives, so speed isn't really an issue
(and if speed were your primary concern I'd tell you to get SCSI).

I really don't think it's worth worrying that a PATA drive you buy today
will disadvantage you in any way.

Cheers,
Daniel.

 

[Eric Parker]

--
Remove the dross to contact me directly

Cool.

But after all this discussion, you have forgotten the first 4 words of
my OP:

"Am in the UK".

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=7726

Eric

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

No he didn't. Horstshit is just plain stupid (or plays a very elaborate troll).
Too many people are giving him playtime. He must be so pleased.

As far as I can tell from looking at the threading without checking the
header you answered to the correct post. Of course it doesn't help if you
don't include some quotes or even an attribution line but apparently Horstshit
prefers that because he can always read the previous message, eh Horstshit?
Pity he doesn't practice himself what he says other people can/must do.

No it doesnt.

Which is completely irrelevant to what he said in the above para where he
was merely rehashing what was said before because of Hortshit's excessive
and compulsive snipping. Next time try and read before you snipe.

No it isnt, its just plain wrong.

Clueless, as always.
He made his previous post 'relevant' where Horstshit thought it wasn't.
In that post he proved that Merrill P. Troll was wrong in several counts.

 

[kony]

In news:[email protected] kony typed:

Hi Kony, I aggree.
My last PC bought in Sep 2005 has a SATA HD as bootable
device and also IDE connectors for older HDs.
So there's no need for extra adapters!

.... depends on how many drives one wants to use.
Those systems I use more often have more than 1 HDD and 1
optical.

Don't understand. An onboard IDE will make no difference to
an extra PCI SATA card on performance.

Yes it will. PCI is normally a minor bottleneck but in this
case (Via KT266 chipset) the PCI bus is the weakest link by
far.

And newer boards will already have a SATA interface.
I don't see any difference on adapter speeds.
Horst

Forget the theoretical adapter speed and look at the
bottlenecks. One most major is the HDD itself but the PCI
bus on old generation Via board as OP has is a very real
bottleneck... in real uses moreso than just a synthetic
benchmark where the drive subsystem was isolated instead of
competing for bandwidth. On these old Via systems it can be
so bad one can't even play an audio file without stuttering
if they have a typical NIC and PCI IDE card... and I don't
mean the notorious SB Creative Labs cards. PCI latency
adjustment tools can alleviate the problem somewhat, but the
PCI is still far weaker than on nForce, Sis, Intel chipsets
of the same era.

 

[Peter van der Goes]

Find a cheaper PCI SATA adaptor on ebay.

Question, as our IT support wants to put a SATA drive in my office PC by
using such an adaptor,
is there a performance penalty involved because the adaptor uses the PCI
bus? I want to point it out if there is before they use that option.

TIA!

 

[kony]

Yes, but one PATA channel may well not be enough,
most obviously if you want to have two optical drives,
you're stuffed, no where to put the PATA hard drives.

yes, that's why if/when the time comes after that next
system is purchased, one could buy the PCI IDE card.
Actually, I'd expect by that time there would be PCI Express
PATA cards in the market enough for them to be
price-competitive and choose that over the 32bit/33Mhz PCI
alternative.

Yes, but the newer motherboards tend to be short on card slots too.

Yes, it is a sad irony that with all the great transitions
going on, many people are left with less versatile systems
for their real-world uses. I still look for boards with
maximum # of PCI slots, particularly towards the bottom of
the board so they aren't conflicting with good video card
cooling if utilized.

Going with SATA now does give you more future tho.

?? How far into the future does one need to look? Since
PATA channel(s) on still on new boards and backwards
compatible, it could even make more sense to have the PATA
drive for data recovery purposes, IF one didn't have any
other SATA capable systems yet. IOW, new system goes down
and user only had the old PATA capable one.

And you get the better SATA cabling now too.

Yes but it seems the least relevant issue, I don't recall a
lot of users having any system functionality problems
because of the PATA cable. Certainly SATA is more
esthetically pleasing and very convenient for eSATA
drives... I'm not against SATA at all but at this point in
time either can work equally well and having to buy a card
later is a minor expense, if necessary which it may not be.

Card can be surprisingly cheap anyway. Clearly
a lot easier to manufacture than a hard drive too.



Nope, the best alternative is a cheaper PCI SATA adaptor.

Nope, we don't know that OP would ever need to buy a card at
all. It's entirely conceivable that if a PATA drive were
bought today, next system will have one free PATA
position... or at worst, THEN the PATA card is bought, and
possibly then in PCI Express format which is a further
benefit.

SATA over PCI is often slower too. Looking beyond the
synthetic benchmarks, most people have nic or sound, etc, on
their PCI bus already.

It isnt exactly a red hot performer, bet he wont even notice.

It can be expected at least 15% slower in many uses, that's
significant enough to perceive when the HDD is already the
bottleneck for many uses.

Oh bullshit.

Have you ever actually TRIED a PCI card on that chipset?
I have... benched it too. Don't recall the scores but did
recall the very significant difference in use of a PCI
controller on that and prior, next gen Via chipsets.
Google for the info if you don't believe,

If you Google,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Via+KT266+PCI+ATA+benchmarks

look at the very first hit, it happens to be KT266A...
http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/archiv/401770/index3.html

.... and this is even BEFORE one tries to use the PCI bus for
other concurrent things like audio or whatever.

In computing most things are typical, but occasionally some
things stand out as very good or bad. Via chipsets PCI
performance in that era were very bad.

 

[kony]

Cool.

But after all this discussion, you have forgotten the first 4 words of
my OP:

"Am in the UK".

It's best to avoid such adapters, having an extra card with
attached cable dangling off the HDD circuit board can cause
problems in the long run. HDD boards aren't exactly
well-attached, nor thick. Just plugging or unplugging the
power connector you can often notice them flexing some.

It's well worth spending the $5-10 more for a regular PCI
card... but really there is no need now, just get the PATA
drive as that is the whole point of PATA drives... to be
able to just USE them in a system supporting PATA.

 

[kony]

Ya think? Prove it.

no need to prove what is common knowledge.

There is no problem doing it, IDT (independant device
timing) means the HDD will run at full speed unless the
optical was a PIO drive.

 

[kony]

The OP presently has a pata m/b and doesn't really want a pci sata card. One
alternative suggested was to get a pata drive and later it would still work
on a newer motherboard, then that newer motherboards have only one pata
channel, then that having a hd and dvd on the same channel should drop the
udma speed to the dvd's. Now my post is relevant.

.... except that it won't... drop the UDMA speed to either
the HDD or DVD. They can each run at their own speed.

 

[kony]

How far back? KT133? Pentium 1?

Yes, around 1995 was the end of that era.

 

[kony]

Makes more sense to do it the other way, buy a SATA drive
and a SATA PCI card, because that will be used only in the
dinosaur that wont be that fast anyway. No point in crippling
the speed of the hard drives in a new fast system by having
them on a PCI card.

It is amazing that today's mindset makes it a problem to
even buy a drive with an interface that actually SUPPORTS
it's use instead of buying a PCI card. It's so very
backwards.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Question, as our IT support wants to put a SATA drive in my office PC by
using such an adaptor,
is there a performance penalty involved because the adaptor uses the PCI
bus? I want to point it out if there is before they use that option.

Depends on your PC and what PCI bus it is using.
Further depends on the number of drives you are using and their usage pattern.

 

[Warra]

The best alternative is to buy a PATA drive. It will be
faster than an SATA, because not only will you be avoiding
use of a PCI SATA card (slower because it's on the PCI bus
instead of southbridge integrated as your PATA controller
onboard, is), but ALSO because your motherboard's Via
chipset is known to have a somewhat low realized PCI
throughput. In other words, your board is among the worst
to use a PCI SATA controller on.

Kony, my chipset is actually the Via KT266A.

I think Via brought out the 266A chipset because of problems with the
original 266 chipset.

(1) Does the A chipset suffer the same low PCI throughput which you
mention?

(2) I already have a PCI controller card for PATA. Would that
indicate to me the sort of performance I would get if I installed a
PCI card for SATA?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

yes, that's why if/when the time comes after that next
system is purchased, one could buy the PCI IDE card.

Actually, I'd expect by that time there would be PCI Express

PATA cards in the market enough for them to be price-competitive

For such a small market, yeah right.

and choose that over the 32bit/33Mhz PCI alternative.




Yes, it is a sad irony that with all the great transitions going on, many
people are left with less versatile systems for their real-world uses.
I still look for boards with maximum # of PCI slots, particularly towards
the bottom of the board so they aren't conflicting with good video card
cooling if utilized.



?? How far into the future does one need to look? Since
PATA channel(s) on still on new boards and backwards
compatible, it could even make more sense to have the PATA
drive for data recovery purposes, IF one didn't have any
other SATA capable systems yet. IOW, new system goes
down and user only had the old PATA capable one.




Yes but it seems the least relevant issue, I don't recall a
lot of users having any system functionality problems
because of the PATA cable. Certainly SATA is more
esthetically pleasing and very convenient for eSATA
drives... I'm not against SATA at all but at this point in
time either can work equally well and having to buy a card
later is a minor expense, if necessary which it may not be.


Nope, we don't know that OP would ever need to buy a card at all.

It's entirely conceivable that if a PATA drive were bought today,
next system will have one free PATA position... or at worst,

THEN the PATA card is bought, and possibly then
in PCI Express format which is a further benefit.

They aren't available now, so why would they be available then.
If you hadn't noticed, PCI IDE is being phased out now already.

SATA over PCI is often slower too. Looking beyond the synthetic
benchmarks, most people have nic or sound, etc, on their PCI bus
already.


It can be expected at least 15% slower in many uses, that's
significant enough to perceive when the HDD is already the
bottleneck for many uses.


Have you ever actually TRIED a PCI card on that chipset?
I have... benched it too. Don't recall the scores but did
recall the very significant difference in use of a PCI
controller on that and prior, next gen Via chipsets.
Google for the info if you don't believe,

If you Google,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Via+KT266+PCI+ATA+benchmarks

look at the very first hit, it happens to be KT266A...
http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/archiv/401770/index3.html

... and this is even BEFORE one tries to use the PCI bus for
other concurrent things like audio or whatever.

75MB/s is still sufficient for single drive use.
For more drives too when not reading sequentially.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

no need to prove what is common knowledge.

There is no problem doing it, IDT (independant device timing) means
the HDD will run at full speed

unless the optical was a PIO drive.

Even then.
Whether it will reach it's top STR (MB per one second) is a different matter though

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

... except that it won't... drop the UDMA speed to either
the HDD or DVD. They can each run at their own speed.

Yes, that is what he proved by posting his bench results, without saying
it with so many words.

 

[Rod Speed]

ebay? No thank you. I find it goes like this on ebay:

£1 for the PCI SATA card.
£5 postage.
£5 to £10 for the time to complete a transaction and swap emails
and check credentials and confirm goods against description.
£10 to chase spotty-faced wanker selling the item about delays.
£10 for angst, grief and general wot-****ing-mess-this-is.

You clearly havent actually got a clue about using ebay.

There are plenty of commercial retail operations
that sell stuff on ebay and it isnt hard to work out
which ones those are using the feedback rating.

And if you cant find that card in a bricks and mortar operation
in that soggy little island of yours for a decent price,
http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle?q=PCI+SATA+adapter&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=p
you could get real radical and order it from somewhere outside
your country from a bricks and mortar operation that has decent
prices. Postage doesnt cost much on something like that.

And even then you find the card prolly does not work (whatever
price is asked). "I'll give you your £1 back then mate and pay
the postage - you can't say fairer than that." **** off sonny,
after all the hassle I just want a working card.

Have you the remotest concept of how silly you look in the eyes
of those of us that have bought plenty of stuff like that off ebay
and havent got anything like the result you got ?