ATA 133 vs SATA

SATA is still in its infancy but if you are proposing to install a 7,200rpm 160GB drive it should be ATA133 which is only marginally slower the the SATA 150. AS this is only a burst rate, I doubt any difference will be noticeable. SATA will be increasing its burst rate as the technology moves ahead, as did the IDE ATA rate. My suggestion is to stick with IDE for now and wait for the problems to be ironed out. One problem that causes me concern is the Serial ATA cable and connectors. The cable might only be around half an inch wide but it is very inflexible and the connectors to motherboard and hard drive are extremely brittle! I have broken several connectors already. I am not very impressed with SATA at the moment. hopefully these niggles will be sorted out in the near future but somehow, I doubt it. It costs money!

Alan R Parsons (ARP Computer Services (UK))

If you dont have SATA connectors already then I would stick with regular ata drives. As mentioned before there isnt much if any speed increase with SATA. Plus you can only run one drive per SATA connection.
Wait till the speeds increase and the drive prices come down before you buy SATA.

That's a very strange SATA experience, as it's the opposite of mine. I'm using 2 WD Raptor SATA drives, and the SATA cables (and SATA power cables!) were definitely nicer to install than normal ATA cables. The simple plug and small wire were much easier to route through my system and attach than ATA ribbons, and I definitely didn't experience any problems with "brittle" cables. I wonder where you obtained these crappy cables?

The only advantage so far for SATA is the IDE cables. 4-pice cable which is more convenient than the normal hdd cable.

<font color=red>If your nose <b>RUNS</b>, and feet <b>SMELL</b>.
Then you must be born <b>UPSIDE DOWN</b>.</font color=red>

Does the same hold true when under RAID 0. Would both ATA133 and SATA 150 run about the same speed with either 2 or 4 drives in RAID 0?

If they do have the near the same end resulting speed is this due to bottlenecking in the south bridge of the motherboard?

I am trying to decide whether or not to make the jump to SATA in my next computer and was under the impression that SATA would be the way to go. Unfortunately my understandings of this tech is somewhat limited.

Russell

Why not simply run a scsi drive?

SATA is only useful if:
1) You want the advantage of the cables, either for airflow in the case (big difference), length of cable or simplicity

2) The drive you're buying is capable of a burst rate >133mb/s. SATA offers 150mb/s. The WD Raptors have such a burst rate.

The 2 WD Raptors I'm using over SATA/RAID0 perform amazingly well. They're unstoppable.