Serial ATA HDD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mr Digital
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Mr Digital

I am thinking of replacing my old 20gig IDE HDD with a 160gig SATA HDD.
apart from the extra capacity i see these are a bit faster too in that they
data rate at 150mbps (i think) so please correct me if i'm wrong.

I am interested in hearing from users of these drives for their comments.

PS of course my mainboard supports this connectivity, it's a Gigabyte P4
Titan.

Phil.
 
Mr said:
I am thinking of replacing my old 20gig IDE HDD with a 160gig SATA HDD.
apart from the extra capacity i see these are a bit faster too in that they
data rate at 150mbps (i think) so please correct me if i'm wrong.
Click to expand...

The serial interface can support 150mps, but most of the SATA drives
still use drive hardware which cannot saturate the ATA/100/133 parallel
interface. SATA is definitely the wave of the future.

Virg Wall
 
Mr said:
I am thinking of replacing my old 20gig IDE HDD with a 160gig SATA HDD.
apart from the extra capacity i see these are a bit faster too in that they
data rate at 150mbps (i think) so please correct me if i'm wrong.

I am interested in hearing from users of these drives for their comments.
Click to expand...

The data rate capability of the buss has little to do with how "fast"
the system feels. The data transfer rate from a disk is determined by
the rotational speed, seek time, and search time. A typical HD might
use about 15 MBPS of the available transfer bandwidth into the CPU.
 
Well, the teoretical rate of 150MiB/s (its mebibytes (or megabytes? doesnot
matter so much...), not megabits!) is hardly used, at burst read or write
you wont get over 100MiB/s.
You could get some advantage using NCQ, if your MB and HDD supports it.
Usually, its better not to replace your old HDD, you can have it for OS
install (its harder to install an OS to SATA drive), for a swapfile etc.

(I am the one who prefers compressing system dir at NTFS, as it takes less
time to load OS, as CPU is still not fully used and less data are read...)

So:
it doesnot matter if you buy an PATA or SATA drive, but SATA are a bit more
expensive, but could be a little bit faster and easier to install (standard
IDE connector is harder to manipulate)

Zdenek Sojka
 
Well, the teoretical rate of 150MiB/s (its mebibytes (or megabytes? doesnot
matter so much...), not megabits!) is hardly used, at burst read or write
you wont get over 100MiB/s.
You could get some advantage using NCQ, if your MB and HDD supports it.
Usually, its better not to replace your old HDD, you can have it for OS
install (its harder to install an OS to SATA drive), for a swapfile etc.

(I am the one who prefers compressing system dir at NTFS, as it takes less
time to load OS, as CPU is still not fully used and less data are read...)

So:
it doesnot matter if you buy an PATA or SATA drive, but SATA are a bit more
expensive, but could be a little bit faster and easier to install (standard
IDE connector is harder to manipulate)

Zdenek Sojka
 
Either a serial or parallel bus is faster than the sustained throughput of any drive. Larger drives are inherently faster than smaller drives because of their higher bit density. Depending on number of platters, rotational speed, etc. you can expect that the sustained data transfer rate of the 160 GB drive will be at least twice that of the 20 GB drive.
 
big-forum.com said:
because the performance gain is about +5% ?
Click to expand...

Where did you get that number? Drives using the same mechanism as the
ATA/100/133 drive won't show any performance gain.

Future drives won't be limited by the PATA electronics.

(And you'll use a smaller cable and won't have to fiddle with
master/slave jumpers!)

Virg Wall
 
I am thinking of replacing my old 20gig IDE HDD with a 160gig SATA HDD.
apart from the extra capacity i see these are a bit faster too in that they
data rate at 150mbps (i think) so please correct me if i'm wrong.

I am interested in hearing from users of these drives for their comments.

PS of course my mainboard supports this connectivity, it's a Gigabyte P4
Titan.

Phil.
Click to expand...

Its the RPM's that makes the difference. Get a WD 10,000 rpm. You'll
notice QUITE a difference.


Have a nice one...

Trent©

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
 
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