Confused About SATA and SATAII

[Mikey_81]

I have an ASRock X58 Extreme mobo. I just put the system together and the manual stated to just set the BIOS setting to IDE for the SATAII hard drive unless I wanted RAID and/or NCQ. That's what I did. No drivers needed for my XP install. So is the hard drive running at SATAII speed (3 gb/sec)? Or just SATA (1.5 gb/sec)? Is there a way I can monitor the data transfer rate of the drive or confirm which mode it is in? I'm using a Seagate 320 GB drive. How do I know if I would benefit from using NCQ? And what the heck is AHCI?

Plan on going to Win7 64-bit so interested in relevant info for Win7 and what are the differences between Win7 and WinXP 32-bit.

Mikey

 

[dark_lord69]

Yes, you still get the SATA II connection speed.
But it wouldn't really matter unless you are using a SSD or a raptor drive.
The majority of drives can't even reach the 1.5 gb/sec spec for SATA.
SATA 3 is comming out to acomidate faster SSD drives.

 

[Mikey_81]

Are you referring the velociraptor 10000 rpm drives from WD? If so, i'm considering one.

Mike

 

[mikey5802]

As an alternative, you may want to consider cost as well. Make no mistake, the velociraptors are great drives, but you can get almost as much bang for your buck by going a different route.

150 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, 16 MB cache, cost: $179.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

300 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, 16 MB cache, cost: $229.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Consider the following:

640 GB 7200 RPM Black, 32 MB cache, cost $74.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

This drive has a single 320 GB platter that gets great read speed b/c it doesn't have to change tracks as much as a 2.5 inch drive.

Purchase two of these and create a 100 GB RAID 0 partition for your OS, then create a second RAID partition for your programs and such using the remainder of both drives. You'll get fast performance and increased storage for less money. And there's almost enough money left over to buy a 1TB Green drive for even more storage (if you need it).

 

[Mikey_81]

Interesting thought.

Found an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/394/1

While RAID0 vs. a single drive dramatically increased the transfer rate, the impact on total system performance was much lower. Best result with the benchmarks was a 15% improvement and most times lower. Since I'm not a gamer or overclocker and not looking for the last iota of performance from a computer, it seems a lot of trouble for the result. Not sure I'd notice the difference.

Mikey

 

[Paperdoc]

OP, good thoughts in your last post, so extend them. If a overall performance increase of 15% or less from RAID0 may not be important, what impact will an expensive 10,000 rpm HDD give you? Worth it?

 

[Mikey_81]

This article seals the deal.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cheap-raid-ravages-wd-raptor,1562.html

RAID0 beat the raptor in almost every benchmark. Not sure what I'm going to do, yet, but I see now that RAID0 is the way to go rather than a raptor.

Mikey

 

[Mikey_81]

As an alternative, you may want to consider cost as well. Make no mistake, the velociraptors are great drives, but you can get almost as much bang for your buck by going a different route.

150 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, 16 MB cache, cost: $179.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

300 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, 16 MB cache, cost: $229.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Consider the following:

640 GB 7200 RPM Black, 32 MB cache, cost $74.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

This drive has a single 320 GB platter that gets great read speed b/c it doesn't have to change tracks as much as a 2.5 inch drive.

Purchase two of these and create a 100 GB RAID 0 partition for your OS, then create a second RAID partition for your programs and such using the remainder of both drives. You'll get fast performance and increased storage for less money. And there's almost enough money left over to buy a 1TB Green drive for even more storage (if you need it).

I just looked at the specs for WD black drives. Average latency is 4.2 ms for 500gb, 640gb, 750gb, and 1tb. Average drive ready time is 11 sec for the 500gb and 640gb, and 13 sec for the 750gb and 1tb.

Is latency what they used to call seek time? What does a 2 sec difference in ready time really mean? Does it matter which I use?

Mikey

 

[Mikey_81]

I saw one place where both seek time and latency were listed so I guess they're not the same. WD doesn't put seek time on their spec sheets. Used to be that seek time was the top number you looked at.

Read posts from people who had problems with the black drives in RAIDs. So now I'm looking at the raid edition drives. Little more money, but I don't want to have problems. The RE3 500GB drive looks nice for about $90. Two of those in a RAID0 would give me a TB.

Mikey

 

[mikey5802]

Here's a link to a Western Digital site that briefly explains the difference between Desktop series and Raid Edition HDD's. It has to do with error recovery. The 500 GB drives are nice as well but they have half the cache (16 MB) vs the 32 MB cache on the desktop edition drives. But with cost factored in, a single 300 GB Velociraptor won't be 3 times as fast as a single 640 GB.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1397&p_created=1131638613&p_sid=te-hSbIj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTcsMTcmcF9wcm9kcz0yMjcsMjc5JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0yLjI3OSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXJhaWQ!&p_li=&p_topview=1

You didn't really say what your main usage of the computer would be, but if you do go with RAID, yeah, you'd probably be better off with the RE3 drives. On the other hand, however, I built a system for my nephew and used two of the Black 640 GB drives in a raid 0 and hasn't had a single problem. Knock on wood.

Good luck....

 

[geofelt]

sata1 and sata 2 determine the maximum rates of data transfer across the interface. This will only occur when transferring data from the hard drive buffer to and from the pc. The drives, themselves transfer data to and from the platters at much less than that. With the new SSD's, that situation may change.

For general use, there is not much to be gained from raid-0. Here is another discussion on that topic:
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0

Synthetic benchmarks can be impressive, but you need to look at real world hard drive patterns.

 

[MRFS]

> Is there a way I can monitor the data transfer rate of the drive or confirm which mode it is in?

Your Southbridge is the ICH10R Intel I/O Controller Hub, Version 10/RAID:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157163&Tpk=N82E16813157163
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=X58%20Extreme&s=


You'll need to force a driver change using Device Manager,
then re-boot into the BIOS and change the SATA mode to AHCI,
in that sequence: if you're not comfortable with this sequence,
you'd be better off re-installing XP and invoking F6 to
load the AHCI device driver.

In AHCI mode, you can install the Intel Matrix Storage Console
which will tell you what mode your HDDs are in:
either "Generation 1" or "Generation 2" under
"Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode".

The former is 150MB/second;
the latter is 300MB/second.


It's not possible simply to switch the BIOS
from "Standard IDE" to "RAID" after installing XP
because the RAID setting requires a session
with the Intel RAID Option ROM (RTFM here --
hard drives need to be initialized first,
so that the BIOS can recognize that array
as a single physical device in "Boot Priority"
PRIOR TO running Windows Setup.

Intel generally recommends that XP be installed
with the BIOS set to "RAID" mode initially, and the F6
option invoked to load drivers, EVEN IF you intend to install
nothing but JBOD HDDs (Just a Bunch Of Disks) initially.

We agree with this recommendation, because
it really saves time down the road, if/when you
want to upgrade to RAID mode.


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

> And what the heck is AHCI?


"AHCI" is an Intel acronym meaning Advanced Host Controller Interface.

It is a set of features in the device driver for Intel's I/O Controller Hubs
that adds support for things such as Native Command Queuing,
Hot-Plugging and automatic detection of SATA/3G interface speeds.

Those features are generally NOT available when "Standard IDE"
is the default BIOS setting for the main (integrated) SATA ports.
This lowest common denominator is usually available to effect
the widest possible compatibility between motherboards and
peripheral devices like HDDs and optical drives.


MRFS

 

[Mikey_81]

Is the Intel Matrix Storage Console available in RAID mode?

Mikey

 

[Mikey_81]

You didn't really say what your main usage of the computer would be, but if you do go with RAID, yeah, you'd probably be better off with the RE3 drives. On the other hand, however, I built a system for my nephew and used two of the Black 640 GB drives in a raid 0 and hasn't had a single problem. Knock on wood.

Several reviews on NewEgg talk about using the black drives in RAID0 and having them drop out occasionally. WD won't replace them because they don't support the use of black drives in RAIDs. I'm willing to spend the extra money to be sure they work. I'll just have to live with the smaller cache.

I mainly do video processing ripping DVDs and editing the video files. I have read that RAID0 can significantly improve video processing performance.

Mikey

 

[Mikey_81]

Just to wrap this thread up, I decided to go with the 640GB black drives. Just couldn't justify the cost of an RE3. If I have trouble with them with RAID0, I'll just use them as single drives and forget about RAID0.

BTW, still waiting for my third ASRock mobo from newegg.

Thanks to all,
Mikey