PATA or SATA?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Atragon
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Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

PATA or SATA?

Post by Atragon » Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:02 am

Is there any noticable difference between the parallel ATA and serial ATA Seagate 80GB drives? (apart from the difference in cache)

Pjotor
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Location: Uppsala, Sweden

Post by Pjotor » Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:18 am

AFAIK there is not much difference, performance-wise, between SATA and PATA drives. SATA is, in theory, a faster interface, but the drives are nowhere near the maximum speeds anyway.

Objections welcome!

walk0080
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Location: Toronto, Ontario

Post by walk0080 » Wed Mar 17, 2004 1:23 am

I personally am still staying away from SATA drives for several reasons (for now at least):

-My motherboard doesn't support SATA.
-Things like external drive USB/1394 cases and drive caddies don't seem to support them (please correct me if I am wrong).
-I've read about random issues with certain motherboards and WinXP installations.
-There are issues with SATA drives and my Compro VideoMate Gold+ TV capture card.

But SATA is great if only for the ease of cabling! I say if you are building a new rig, you might as well go SATA.

DGK
Posts: 70
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 3:59 pm

Post by DGK » Wed Mar 17, 2004 3:36 am

I have SATA in my newest computer, not any faster but the smaller cables are nice for improved airflow and installation.

walk0080: when I built my new computer, I used a PATA drive for my old computer in a external usb 2.0 case. When i was researching which one to buy I remember seeing a external SATA drive kit. Here is a link that shows a few of them: http://iocombo.com/mall/showmall.php?pid=4

Bar81
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Location: Dubai

Post by Bar81 » Wed Mar 17, 2004 10:26 am

walk0080 wrote:I personally am still staying away from SATA drives for several reasons (for now at least):

-My motherboard doesn't support SATA.
-Things like external drive USB/1394 cases and drive caddies don't seem to support them (please correct me if I am wrong).
-I've read about random issues with certain motherboards and WinXP installations.
-There are issues with SATA drives and my Compro VideoMate Gold+ TV capture card.

But SATA is great if only for the ease of cabling! I say if you are building a new rig, you might as well go SATA.
Sounds like the problem is with your motherboard & SATA controller/drivers and not with SATA. Enclosures are coming so that's not a big issue unless you have to get something today.

Surprisingly, there isn't a real difference in the interfaces in terms of performance as long as you're not loading up on devices. I've stayed away from PATA because I hated the lag when using multiple IDE devices. Now that SATA is here, I can put my boot Raptor HD on a SATA channel, my upcoming Plex SATA DVD burner on SATA and use my PATA 120G on IDE by itself. This setup works great as there is only one item using IDE. Maybe I'm imagining things but the SATA negotiating between multiple devices is much improved over its IDE implementation.

Belgarion
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Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2002 5:46 pm
Location: Maryland

Post by Belgarion » Wed Mar 17, 2004 7:20 pm

One other thing to consider is that SATA, with the same drive, could be slightly faster if TCQ (command queueing) is available. However, few SATA drives suport TCQ at this time (the 74GB Raptor being one), and supposedly none of the controllers on the market enable it. So at the present it's a moot point, but it might make a difference in the future. I think the best argument for SATA drives right now is the low profile cable, and perhaps also the lack of master/slave cable sharing issues.

Also, I saw an external enclosure with (internal) SATA interface very recently at an online vendor. I don't remember the host interface (maybe 1394/USB combo), but it said it took SATA drives. Maybe this was on Newegg? Anyway, they're just now hitting the market. A 1394b case with SATA support with a Raptor thrown in would be nice.

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