Barracuda SATA vs. IDE

[trader_sweden]

I am planning to buy a Barracuda V since they are very quiet.

However, my question is, is the only difference between the IDE and the SATA version of the Barracuda the cord and the speed of transfer?

With a Gigabyte 8INXP motherboard and SATA RAID, the maximum transfer speed will be 133MB/s since the PCI bus don't support faster.

The speed of the IDE disks are up to 50MB/s (I think), which will give a total of 100MB/s in RAID mode.

The differnece in price between the 120GB SATA and IDE Barrucuda is USD 35 per harddrive.

Comments?

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Go for the IDE version. You will see 0% performance increase with S-ATA. It will be just easier to install the S-ATA HDD

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[trader_sweden]

What if I only buy 1 SATA drive and run it in normal mode. Instead of 2 IDE drives in RAID 0 mode. I think that the SATA configuraiton will be as fast as the IDE mode config.

The advantage is that you don't risk losing all your info if one of the IDE drives brakes. And I don't need to buy 2 drives!

 

[Spate]

I'd say go for the SATA version. Performance will probably be exactly the same as parallel ATA version. The only good reason for buying SATA is the slim data cable. Which I think is an excelent reason.

btw, as far as I know, SATA and parallel ATA are both interfaces for IDE HD's. Talking about buying SATA drives 'OR' IDE drives is therefore a little confusing.

 

[trader_sweden]

Isn't SATA supposed to be as fast as 80 MB/s? Compared to the fastast PATA drives which goes up to 50 MB/s. Right? Then SATA will be much faster. I might not even need RAID 0.

And is it really worth USD 40 more money (here in Sweden) per 120 GB drive just to have slim cable??

 

[Spate]

I'm not sure what numbers you are refering to when you say 80MB/s for SATA and 50MB/s for PATA. The first version of SATA supports a theoretical 150MB/s, while the fastest PATA is 133MB/s (theoretically).

However, these numbers are maximum transfer rates for the data bus. They say nothing about what speeds the actual HD is capable of. The best IDE HD's today are able to achieve around 45 - 50 MB/s (read/write). Since the HD itself is the bottleneck, whether you use SATA or PATA is not affecting the performance.

Typically, in an optimally tuned RAID 0 you can achieve about 90 MB/s (read/write). Again, whether you use SATA or PATA interface on your IDE disks is not very important for performance.

 

[trader_sweden]

Ok, thanks! I think I go for the PATA then since I don't think it's worth the extra money to get an easier HD cord.

The 80MB/s I was referring to is the maximum capacity of the SATA controllers in most of the motherboards on the market according to tom's hardware review of the Granite bay boards.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

A couple of points...
One. Both protocols ARE IDE. You have SerialATA or Parallel ATA.
Two. P-ATA can transfer data at 100 or 133mb/sec. The fastest IDE hard drive can only transfer data at around 50-55Mb/sec. Thus S-ATA with its 150mb/sec interface give no performance bonuses.

The advantages of S-ATA is the simplified connection method (no master/slave), Long length easy to use cables for big cases, No Data corruption due to long cables and sometime in the future, more SCSI like options like command queing and hotswappable ability.

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