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sprite   02-11-2006 at 11:41:09 PM

Hi all,

Previously i've been using IDE HDD's for all my PC's and am now looking for a quiet 200GB SATA HDD.

Will i also need a SATA controller ? (what the hell are these btw) Or any additional cables ? (I have 2 SATA cables included with my mobo)

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Luminaris   02-12-2006 at 02:27:00 AM
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If your MB came with SATA cables, more than likely it already supports SATA. Just look at the board and see if it has SATA connections. If not, you will need a SATA controller which are usually PCI cards you would install and setup.

Provide specs on your board and we can tell you if it already supports SATA or not.

If your in the market for a new SATA drive, go for a Seagate drive with the largest cache. I've had nothing but good luck with those and they yield very high performance. When loading the operating system on a new drive, you will need to load the drivers. Just hit F6 on your keyboard (provided your using windows) when prompted and have the floppy disk with the drivers on it in the drive.

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sprite   02-12-2006 at 01:21:10 PM
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Epox EP9NPAJ SLI and yes it does have SATA connectores on the motherboard, so does this mean i won't need a SATA pci card controller ?

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Luminaris   02-13-2006 at 08:57:19 PM
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That's correct. You would just connect the SATA cables directly to the MB.

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FlyGuy   02-13-2006 at 09:05:57 PM
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The Samsung spinpoint drives are definitely the quietest but certainly not the fastest.

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weilin   02-13-2006 at 09:14:24 PM
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look at what version of SATA you have. find out if its SATA 1 or SATA II. 1 operates at 150mb/s and 2 operates at 300 mb/s (sometimes advertised as 3gb/s). Some drives are not backwards compatible and you wouldnt want to miss out on doubling the potential bandwidth now would u...

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Ches111   02-13-2006 at 09:32:13 PM
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Weilin,

The fastest possible drive in the desktop market is the WD Raptor drive suite.

They are pretty much maxed at about 74mb/s transfer @burst/sometimes sustained (based on the benchmark APP). There are NO drives available YET that could even remotely use the bandwidth of the SATA I interface.

The 300mb/s that SATA II offers is just theorhetical. This is unfortunate but true. They have been working with 100mb/s interfaces for years but still not capable of hitting the marks.

Closest you will come to hitting the performance mark is multiple Raptors striped and in Raid 0 configuration. These still tend to not hit over 100mb/s on the single SATA interface.

By the way the Raptors (being a 10K RPM drive) are NOT quiet.

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Ches111   02-13-2006 at 09:35:55 PM
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Also,

Forot to tell ya.... The only problems that people have had with SATA drives is the power connector (COULD BE) different than the standard molex connector. But most drives/power supplies support both the new and the old power connectors.

If you want better performance from a SATA drive look for Native Command Queing. This is basically a new onboard Cache algorithym which allows for quicker transfers since you hit the cache a little more frequently!!

Also remember you will likely be using a combination of SATA and IDE for optical/HDDs. So this may not be a totally intuitive setup. Pay alot of attention in the Bios when doing a HDD scan and make sure the onboard SATA controller is ENABLED.

edit: "Hope this helps"

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bob5568   02-13-2006 at 09:52:21 PM
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I have a great, but slightly older power supply, to connect my new SATA drive, I bought a converter power cable. You can find one at any computer store.

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Ches111   02-13-2006 at 09:59:27 PM
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BOB is correct...


I just like saying that :-)

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Coelocanth   02-13-2006 at 11:00:58 PM
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't have to do the F6 driver dance when loading Windows unless you're setting up a RAID configuration. I didn't when I set up my new rig.

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Ches111   02-13-2006 at 11:20:31 PM
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Actually it could depend on the MOBO manufacturer. I think most have the Primary well integrated into the Bios. The secondary could be a different story like on my MSI NEO. For anything installed on the Secondary I have to load drivers in windows to get the controller active and recognized.

SO it DEPENDS!!

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Coelocanth   02-14-2006 at 02:04:26 AM
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Ah, yes. I stand corrected. :)

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