ATA Hard Drive & SATA External Drive

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
N

noor1239

Honorable
Nov 12, 2014
4
0
10,510
Hi

I have a pc with ATA 1TB Hard drive. Win 7 64-bit.

My question is does it make any difference if I buy a SATA External drive and use it with my ATA Hard drive? So will i get a boost in operation speed if i use the SATA with my ATA?

Many thanks.

Noor
 
Solution
P
Very unlikely you will see any speed boost.

First of all the connection method is critical. It is common to find external drive units, especially ones connected to older computers, using USB2 connections. The communication speed of USB2 is MUCH less than the speed of the HDD inside the enclosure, so the HDD unit's speed rating does not matter at all.

Now, IF you get an external drive that uses USB3, AND IF you can install a USB3 port on your computer, that system's communication speed is faster than any SATA HDD. So in that case you get the full speed performance of the SATA HDD. What is that? The fastest current HDD units (excluding SSDs) are maybe 35% faster than the ATA units that were sold in the mid-200x's. So in that case you...
Sort by date Sort by votes
P

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
Oct 19, 2006
11,280
1,035
69,340
Very unlikely you will see any speed boost.

First of all the connection method is critical. It is common to find external drive units, especially ones connected to older computers, using USB2 connections. The communication speed of USB2 is MUCH less than the speed of the HDD inside the enclosure, so the HDD unit's speed rating does not matter at all.

Now, IF you get an external drive that uses USB3, AND IF you can install a USB3 port on your computer, that system's communication speed is faster than any SATA HDD. So in that case you get the full speed performance of the SATA HDD. What is that? The fastest current HDD units (excluding SSDs) are maybe 35% faster than the ATA units that were sold in the mid-200x's. So in that case you would see the storage drive perform a bit faster than your internal ATA unit, but you'd only see that when using that external drive. It would not affect other kinds of work.

The main effect you will see is capacity - you will have a LOT more space to store stuff.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom