SATA vs ATA drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter B.
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Peter B.

I need to add a new hard drive to my ASUS p4p800 deluxe machine. It
currently has an ATA 100 drive. In the real world, are the SATA drives
that much faster than an ATA drive? I know that they are capable of
operating a 150 MBps, but does that translate into a drive that is 50%
faster than my current drive?

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages to SATA drives?

Pete
 
I need to add a new hard drive to my ASUS p4p800 deluxe machine. It
currently has an ATA 100 drive. In the real world, are the SATA drives
that much faster than an ATA drive? I know that they are capable of
operating a 150 MBps, but does that translate into a drive that is 50%
faster than my current drive?

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages to SATA drives?

Pete
Click to expand...


The only current advantages of SATA is the narrow cable and an extra
channel in addition to your ide channels.

Both good things ;)
 
No, SATA drive is not necessarily faster than ATA (PATA)
drive. The physical design, ie. how fast is the platters
rotates, and how fast the servo motors move the read/write
across the platters, matters. So, with similar physical
design SATA vs PATA drive, they perform very much the same
in real system. Most hard disk vendors produce both SATA
and PATA drives basing on the same physical platforms, and
the performance difference is minimal.

What SATA drive will give you is:
1) Thinner data cable, so better air circulation within
chasis.
2) Potentially to have hot-plug capability, but whether
hot-plug is supported depends on a lot of things, like
chipset design, driver support and OS support, etc.

My 2 cents.

Stephen Wong @ Hong Kong
 
Peter B. said:
I need to add a new hard drive to my ASUS p4p800 deluxe machine. It
currently has an ATA 100 drive. In the real world, are the SATA drives
that much faster than an ATA drive? I know that they are capable of
operating a 150 MBps, but does that translate into a drive that is 50%
faster than my current drive?

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages to SATA drives?
Click to expand...

Apart from the points that have already been mentioned:
+ SATA cable is not only thinner, but also longer (up to 1 m), a
welcome relief from the ever too short PATA cables
+ you can connect a WD Raptor (preferably the 74 gig model)
- potential (driver) maturity problems

Stephan
 
I agree with Wong. I have a WD 80 gig PATA, rotation speed 7200 with
8 mg cache AND a WD 160 gig SATA, rotation speed 7200 with 8 mg cache.
In the various tests I've run PATA transfers at approx 45 mg/sec none
burst while SATA transfers at approx 34 mg/sec none burst.

SATA is no longer has my booting partition but it does liberate my
VIA & IDE controllers. The smaller cable is also nice.

Burst speed of 150 mg/sec is nice on paper but not in a practical
sence.

My 2 cents worth (Canadian)

Locust
 
I need to add a new hard drive to my ASUS p4p800 deluxe machine. It
currently has an ATA 100 drive. In the real world, are the SATA drives
that much faster than an ATA drive? I know that they are capable of
operating a 150 MBps, but does that translate into a drive that is 50%
faster than my current drive?

Are there any other advantages or disadvantages to SATA drives?

Pete
Click to expand...

here are my test results: sisoftsandra_pro_2003:

NOTE: fresh install "XPMCE2004" no updates or patches:
(same drive used on intel sata controler and intel ide controler...)

-IDE HDD (with *RocketHead on intel SATA...) = 29645
-IDE HDD (with *cs primary ide drive ata 100...) = 29558

*sata to ata adapter
*cable select

NOTE: I have not been able to run a RAID configuration with the
RocketHead adapters, so the point(sata) is mute...

except for the cosmetics and the raid ability, which, incidently, is
not incorporated into all the ICH5 capable motherboards...

FYI

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