Is SATA an IDE or SCSI technolog?

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Actually both IDE & SCSI are Parallel technologies. SATA is
Serial ATA (Single Data Line) so it belongs to neither family.
 
SATA is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (Serial)

IDE uses parallel signaling
 
PATA and SATA are not ATAPI drives. ATAPI is an interface that allows
'non-hard disk drives' to attach to the same 40 pin EIDE controllers
that EIDE hard drives use. At least according to the website you linked
to, as well as the A+ cert text.
SATA is an ATA drive, but it is not an EIDE drive nor is it SCSI..it is
a newer drive type and will eventually replace EIDE.

ATA is an industry standard that means little more than the controller
has been integrated into the drive, so yes I would say they are
'related' to EIDE drives...but then again, how much like your distant
relatives are you?
 
While we're on this topic, I'd like to ask a question. I'm in the middle of
making a decision which drive technology to use for our new server, SCSI or
SATA.

How reliable is SATA? Is it more reliable than EIDE but slightly less
reliable than SCSI? Does anyone use SATA (hardware) RAID on mission critical
machines (such as mail or database servers)?
 
Bones said:
PATA and SATA are not ATAPI drives.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the typo - I meant ATA....
ATAPI is an interface that allows
'non-hard disk drives' to attach to the same 40 pin EIDE controllers
that EIDE hard drives use. At least according to the website you linked
to, as well as the A+ cert text.
SATA is an ATA drive, but it is not an EIDE drive nor is it SCSI..it is
a newer drive type and will eventually replace EIDE.
Click to expand...

According to the website I posted, ATA = IDE/EIDE and SATA tries to emulate
PATA.

SATA, like ATA and PATA defines the interface, not the drive. Some of the
early SATA drives were nothing more than 'IDE' drives that had circuitry
added to convert the parallel interface to a serial one. If you plan on
buying SATA, make sure it isn't one of these hybrids, if you are counting on
the higher throughput.

I'm not sure about the motherboard end of it, but AFAIK, the data busses are
still parallel, so serial <-> parallel conversion has to take place on the
motherboard. SATA apparently evolved to deal with the crosstalk-type problems
in the parallel cables at throughput higher than ATA/133.
ATA is an industry standard that means little more than the controller
has been integrated into the drive, so yes I would say they are
'related' to EIDE drives...but then again, how much like your distant
relatives are you?
Click to expand...

The ATA spec defines the interface between the drive and the system. AFAIK,
it does not dictate that the controller be physically part of the drive, even
though that is the practice.

Yes, SATA/PATA/ATA are related to IDE drives, and are closer on the family
tree than to SCSI, which I took to be the spirit of the original question.
 
Ron said:
While we're on this topic, I'd like to ask a question. I'm in the middle of
making a decision which drive technology to use for our new server, SCSI or
SATA.

How reliable is SATA? Is it more reliable than EIDE but slightly less
reliable than SCSI? Does anyone use SATA (hardware) RAID on mission critical
machines (such as mail or database servers)?
Click to expand...


If I were responsible for corporate data/server, I would stay with SCSI. The
website I posted earlier says, "And SATA can have serious problems with
reliability and data integrity." They don't elaborate, but SATA is still a
fairly young technology with the standards still evolving, and SCSI, in
addition to being faster than SATA (if you pick the right flavor) is tried
and true.

The one experience I had with SATA RAID was not good. The machine was a
fairly new Dell Workstation/XEON w/SATA RAID, and unknown to the owner,
someone at DELL had set it to RAID 0 (striped) instead of RAID 1 (mirror).
According to Dell corporate tech support (based in US, not India), RAID 1 was
the default setting, so it looks like the assembly line test tech forgot to
set it back before shipment.

One drive on this machine went south (at about 2 yrs old) and her data was
toast. Since she had the 3 yr warranty, she didn't have to pay for the disk,
but that was small consolation.

If I were forced to use SATA RAID, I would run RAID 1, or mirrored arrays of
RAID 0.
 
We're running two SATA hardware RAID 5 subsystems. No problems so far. As
for the reliability, the underlying drive hardware - where the head
(doesn't) meet the platter - is the same for SATA, EIDE, and SCSI, so if
there are reliability issues, they will be for all the drives using the
physical drive hardware design. As it's been previously pointed out, SATA
is simply a protocol for controlling the drive and moving data on and off
the drive.

Mike Ober.
 
Michael D. Ober said:
We're running two SATA hardware RAID 5 subsystems. No problems so far.
Click to expand...

How long have they been running? Which flavor of SATA?

As for the reliability, the underlying drive hardware - where the head
(doesn't) meet the platter - is the same for SATA, EIDE, and SCSI, so if
there are reliability issues, they will be for all the drives using the
physical drive hardware design.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Yes, the platter, head and actuator designs are probably the
same so the reliability of those components would be comparable, but the SATA
hardware interface and code change the equation. The SATA spec, as well as
the hardware, is still evolving. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are
unreliable, but it does mean that they aren't the known quantity that SCSI is.

This page is dated, but it covers some of the reliability issues that have
been seen, that only affect SATA...

http://ata-atapi.com/sata.htm
As it's been previously pointed out, SATA
is simply a protocol for controlling the drive and moving data on and off
the drive.
Click to expand...

It is not simply a protocol. It is a hardware interface, driven by embedded
software/firmware that is different from that used with SCSI and IDE/EIDE.
 
Since December. I don't know which version of the SATA spec. As for the
lost data when a drive fails, that's why we don't use Raid configurations
that don't provide for drive failures.

Mike.
 
RAID0 = suicide
Thanks all for the feedback regarding SATA drives. I'll stick with SCSI for
now.
 
While we're on this topic, I'd like to ask a question. I'm in the
middle of making a decision which drive technology to use for our new
server, SCSI or SATA.

How reliable is SATA? Is it more reliable than EIDE but slightly less
reliable than SCSI? Does anyone use SATA (hardware) RAID on mission
critical machines (such as mail or database servers)?


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Click to expand...

I am currently using two 200 gig HDD. One is SATA and the other EIDE.
Comparing the two SATA does access data quicker but generates more heat than
the EIDE one ( according to the Temp display on my machine ).

One thing puzzles me though ... why does SATA drives use a horrible orange
coloured cable???? ;)

My personal opinion is go for the SATA drive.


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