ATA or SATA?

[Todde]

Hi all!

I'm thinking of going from ATA to SATA, untill i saw a post here from a guy who have huge problems with his SATA drive...

How much does SATA do for me who's still on ATA 100 IBM drives? The thing is that i must change my Mobo as well.
So does this purchase match the amount of money i spend... or am i just buying problems?

I was planing to boot my system from this SATA drive (Seagate btw) is that to recomend or is this just a RAID thingy this SATA drives? I want speed and not time consuming booting and stuff...

Thanks in advanced

Todde

 

[jammydodger]

Why do you want to go from ATA to SATA? The only advantage of SATA is the size of the cables (which are much smaller), it is no faster than ATA. My dad has had loads of problems with is maxtor SATA drives on nforce2 boards, however Im using an Intel ICH5R based board and 2xseagate 7200.7's in RAID 0 and they work fine.
RAID applys to SATA in the same way that it applys to ATA, it can be used if your conroller supports it, but is not necessary.

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[DOOM]

Jammydodger is mistaken. SATA drives are inarguably faster than standard ATA.

I went from a 7200rpm ATA100 to a 10,000rpm SATA150 and saw drive throughput go from about 32MB/s to about 44MB/s. <b>That's an increase of about 30%.</b>

Granted, the spindle speed on a seagate SATA is only 7200rpm (not 10,000), which will be a limiting factor, but <b>the faster interface speed will make a noticeable difference regardless</b>. I went from an ATA100 to an ATA133 and saw an increase in drive throughput of about 10%. If going from ATA100 to ATA133 gives 10%, ATA100 to SATA150 will give at least that much, probably more. This is especially true if the spindle rate is increased as well. And if Todde's current PATA drive has a 2MB cache, he can expect to see another 5-10% increase in throughput from the boost in cached performance on a SATA drive (which comes with 8MB cache).

So, back to Todde: SATA drives are a worthwhile investment, and no, you do not have to configure them as RAID. They can run standalone. I would recommend going with Western Digital's "Raptor" SATA. Although it is smaller (36GB), it has a faster spindle rate (10,000rpm) and will perform noticeably better than other SATA drives. It retails for about $114. If you have the money, WD just came out with a 74GB version which retails for around $245. But for that price, you might as well buy two of the smaller ones and configure them as RAID-0. Doing so will probably get you about 90MB/s throughput.

I don't have experience with any SATA controllers besides Intel's embedded controller on the i875P chipset, which works beautifully for me. You might be able to find a good PCI SATA controller card to avoid buying a whole new motherboard/CPU/mem combo.

Hope this helps.

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P4C800-E Dlx, P4 3.0 @ 3.5MHz, 1024 Corsair @ 5550MB/s, 72GB WD 10,000rpm SATA as RAID-0 @ 92MB/s, Antec TruePower 480W, Zalman 7000 AlCu HSF, Arctic Silver III, FSB 233, CPUv 1.6, 3-4-3-7 PAT

 

[jammydodger]

The only SATA hard drives that are 10000RPM are the WD raptors! They are not faster because of the SATA interface, they are faster because they spin at 10000RPM!

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[DOOM]

So let me just get this straight. You are saying that a 7200rpm SATA150 drive will perform absolutely no better than a 7200rpm ATA100 drive?

OK Jammydodger, if spindle speed is all that matters, then why does a 7200rpm ATA133 drive outperform a 7200rpm ATA100 drive?

What you're saying is nonsense. You are just repeating an exaggerated version of something you read in a popular magazine or on some gamer site, but you seem to have no understanding of the technology and you definitely have no experience using it, because if you did, you wouldn't be spouting this garbage. Have you done even a single benchmark to back up your claim?

The fact is that interface speed <b>is</b> significant, because a hard drive's cache gets hit quite often, actually, at least during typical usage.

____
P4C800-E Dlx, P4 3.0 @ 3.5MHz, 1024 Corsair @ 5550MB/s, 72GB WD 10,000rpm SATA as RAID-0 @ 92MB/s, Antec TruePower 480W, Zalman 7000 AlCu HSF, Arctic Silver III, FSB 233, CPUv 1.6, 3-4-3-7 PAT

 

[jammydodger]

and you definitely have no experience using it, because if you did, you wouldn't be spouting this garbage.

Im using 2xSATA seagate 7200.7s in RAID 0, I also own an ATA WD special edition hard disk, 2x5200RPM ATA hard disks in raid 0 and my dad uses 2x SATA Maxtor hard disks. So I do have a little experience with hard disks. Why is it you think the SATA interface increases speed so much? The ATA interface allows for a maximum throughput of 133MB/s and SATA allows 150MB/s...no drive currently available can transfer data faster than 80MB/s! (on seagates web site it says the drives are capable of sustained transfer rates of 27-40MB/sec).
What two drives were you comparing? What benchmarks were you using?

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[DOOM]

Using SiSoftware Sandra as a benchmark, going from ATA100 to ATA133 results in an improvement of about 15%, IIRC. Going from a 2MB cache to an 8MB cache has a similar effect. The point I am making is that cache performance is a significant factor in overall HDD performance, and therefore interface speed is also significant.

The reason that interface speed matters is because of the hard drive's cache. Every hard drive keeps an onboard cache. When a file is accessed on the drive, the cache loads a whole block of 2 or 8 MB (depending on the drive). Then when the O/S requests the next part of the file or another file that immediately follows the first, the HDD already has that data in cache memory, and can serve it back to the system at the full transfer rate of the interface.

A hard drive's cache gets hit pretty often. That's why you see an increase when going from a standard WD drive (2MB cache) to a special edition (8MB cache). That's also why you see an increase when going from a WD (ATA100) to a Maxtor (ATA133). And that's why you will see an increase when going from ATA100 to SATA150, <b>regardless of spindle speed or sustained media transfer rates</b>.

Please understand, I'm not saying you will double your performance. We are talking 5, 10, 15 percent here.

You are saying that SATA gives <b>no</b> improvement over PATA, and I am saying that is absolutely false. There is <b>some</b> improvement, and it is up to the consumer to decide whether that amount improvement is worth the additional cost. For many it is not.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with SATA unless it were a 10,000rpm drive, but that's not because there is no gain in a 7200rpm SATA drive. It's because the gain of a 7200rpm SATA drive is not worth the money. I wouldn't go with ATA133 for the same reason: not because it isn't better, but because it isn't worth the extra cost.

A lot of the numbers are vague to me, because I didn't keep a record of my tests. It would be fun to do a benchmarking roundup of drives with various interfaces and spindle speeds, just to lay the argument to rest. What benchmarking tools have you used to determine a drive's performance?

____
P4C800-E Dlx, P4 3.0 @ 3.5MHz, 1024 Corsair @ 5550MB/s, 72GB WD 10,000rpm SATA as RAID-0 @ 92MB/s, Antec TruePower 480W, Zalman 7000 AlCu HSF, Arctic Silver III, FSB 233, CPUv 1.6, 3-4-3-7 PAT

 

[jammydodger]

What drive were you using for ATA100 and what drive for ATA133?

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[DOOM]

WD 80GB 7200 ATA100 8MB vs Maxtor 200GB 7200 ATA133 8MB

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P4C800-E Dlx, P4 3.0 @ 3.5MHz, 1024 Corsair @ 5550MB/s, 72GB WD 10,000rpm SATA as RAID-0 @ 92MB/s, Antec TruePower 480W, Zalman 7000 AlCu HSF, Arctic Silver III, FSB 233, CPUv 1.6, 3-4-3-7 PAT

 

[jim552]

I have had NO problems with SATA drives on any of the systems that I support.

I only use Western Digital, and Seagate SATA hard drives.

Motherboards that I have used are ALL Asus. (A7n8x, SK8N, A7v8x, and various sub-models of each of them.) NOTHING is overclocked.

The only PCI SATA cards I've used are from Promise. (S150TX2, S150TX4, Fastrak S150TX4). Also on ALL of the above mentioned motherboards I have used the onboard SATA controllers as well.

One caveat though. I have NOT installed ANY SATA configuration in multi-drive Raid 0. I have used Raid 1 extensively.

Not a single problem what-so-ever.

The ONLY annoying thing about the Raptor drives is that there is no external activity LED. (This would be VERY handy, as the Storcase removable drive carriers I use could show individual drive activity then. I've talked to Western Digital, but they don't seem to care one way or another.) Since the Raptors were positioned as "Enterprise Drives", and since almost all SCSI drives have external activity LED's I just figured they would as well.

 

[jammydodger]

The difference you saw in performance could be due to the different drives, the 200GB drive will have a faster access time than the 80GB one.

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[Solidox2k]

I've just ordered a SATA drive, mainly cause i wanted to try it out. someone mentioned earlier about having probs with sata and nforce boards...... anyone else have any probs with that? asking cause my board has nvidia chipsets on it (A7N8X deluxe)....i'd like to know soon, cause i don't wanna waste $95

 

[Johanthegnarler]

He's smoking crack. I've used S-ATA on two intel systems and 3 AMD systems now and have had no problems.
That's not including my 1 AMD system , NF7-s with seagate 7200rpm 8mb cache S-ata. And i only bought it becuase it was 4 dollars more at the time and i'd rather have a skinny cable than a 40pin connector stopping the airflow in my case.

<A HREF="http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081" target="_new">http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081</A>
Figured i'd do it too..reality my ass.

 

[Solidox2k]

well, just curious about the nforce chipset boards... seems everytime i get something new, something always goes wrong. like a while ago, comp wouldn't POST for an hour, then suddenly decided to work, and no problems... im cursed.

 

[jammydodger]

I have heard about a few people on here that have problems with maxtor drives and nforce2 boards, my dad has had a lot of trouble setting up his 2 SATA maxtor drives with his AN7.

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[Solidox2k]

yay. got it in today. had some trouble getting winxp disc to recognize it (doing clean install). seems the driver diskette was on my mobo disc, still got probs from xp anyway. somehow, xp magically decided to work (actually i think it was corrupted driver diskette). after that, everything has been smooth. speed has been noticably better, transfer rates though seem just a tad better (to be expected, as said limitations mentioned earlier).

kinda cool. two questions. besides the connector to the mobo, theres a much longer connector on the drive...whats that for? and will something like this get real hot, or need a small hdd cooler?

 

[jim552]

The bigger connector is the SATA standard power supply connector. It features several different voltage choices, (although I think currently on 5v and 12v are supported), and I think there is some power supply intelligence features there as well, but I would have to review the specification to verify that.

It is "DEFINATELY" the power connector though.

On removeable cases for power supplies the SATA interface connector and power supply connector mate right up.