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Thread: SATA 1 and 2 Question

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    SATA 1 and 2 Question

    Seeking advice from all the experts out here.....

    I'm planning (as always) what I'd like in my next self-build (PC, not house!)

    I have a question - for the operating systems (Windows XP), should I use a SATA-II drive (7,200 rpm 8Mb/16Mb cache), or the 10k rpm Sata-I Drive ( http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=90706 )?

    Thoughts and comments please....

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    Depends on what you want. Breakneck speed then get the raptor.
    Overall good speed and space, get a normal 7200rpm SATA-II drive.

    As im in the process off my next self build (x2 3800, 2 gig crucial ballistix< plan to run cubase with 2gig sound kit) im going to have the 74gb raptor as system drive and a maxline 3 (16mb cache) as the mp3's, vids and data drive.

    Also if you have a motherboard that is SATA-II compatible make sure you switch on NCQ.

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    YUKIKAZE arthurleung's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by playz28
    Depends on what you want. Breakneck speed then get the raptor.
    Overall good speed and space, get a normal 7200rpm SATA-II drive.

    As im in the process off my next self build (x2 3800, 2 gig crucial ballistix< plan to run cubase with 2gig sound kit) im going to have the 74gb raptor as system drive and a maxline 3 (16mb cache) as the mp3's, vids and data drive.

    Also if you have a motherboard that is SATA-II compatible make sure you switch on NCQ.
    If its for a system disk, you should not turn on NCQ because it lags the desktop. It deprioritize the system files so the CPU actually gets the system data LATER, which means slower system response when you're copy/read/writing large files. Although those files indeed transfer slightly faster.
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    The difference between the Sata I and Sata II pretty much irrelevent for todays HDDs. Most drives dont even get close to Sata I's max bandwidth of 1.5Gb/s let alone the 3.0Gb/s of SATA II. The only real diffenece at the moment is that all Sata II HDDs have NCQ while some Sata I disks dont.

    The new Samsung Spinpoint 250GB P120S Sata II is reckoned to be slightly faster than the 10k Raptors in some areas and of course much better value for money .
    http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050427/

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    Thanks for that point - very useful. Do you know whether anyone publishes actual "throughput" from these drives (i.e. Mb/s)? Also, if I use RAID then the throughput should be better?

    Planned config is Mirrored System disks (this thread) and then RAID-5 Large capacity drives (x4) for Photos, Videos, MP3s etc.

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    SATA II is merely a marketing ploy, as far as I'm aware all current SATA II drivers are not 3.0Gb/s. Most say "SATA II features" even if they have SATA II in their names, these features include NCQ and hotswap. I learnt this the hard way by purchasing a Maxtor Maxline III.

    As for your question, personally if you have the money get a raptor for an operating system and games/applications and another larger drive for media (music, pictures and other things that take up lots of space).

    Standard Raid will increase the performance of standard drives but not up to the level of the Raptor where the 10k spinal speed really gives the drive raw power. Also you may think that putting two Raptors in Raid would be a good idea, but to be honest the performance benefits are minimal, if you have the money put them in a mirror raid setup for extra data security.

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    Not Very Senior Member RavenNight's Avatar
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    Although a lot of the drives that claim to be SATA-II aren't, several are, if you look on Scan http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...humbnails=yesa a lot of them are true SATA II drives, they are just shipped as SATA I to avoid conflict with older motehrboards, a simple update program unlocks the SATA-II ability.
    Last edited by RavenNight; 08-09-2005 at 09:28 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RavenNight
    Although a lot of the drives that claim to be SATA-II aren't, several are, if you look on Scan http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...humbnails=yesa a lot of them are true SATA II drives, they are just shipped as SATA I to avoid conflict with older motehrboards, a simple update program unlocks the SATA-II ability.
    Like I said, they may say SATA II but most do not offer SATA II speeds, so in my mind they are not true SATA II drives. A few may, but I doubt it's many.

    Futher reading:

    http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2450

    http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

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    Thanks for the links - very useful. I'll read carefully when selecting drives.....

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    NCQ was included in the original SATA spec as was Hot-Swapping. It simply wasn't implemented in a number of early drives. In this case, go for the 10K drive - it'll have faster seek times and lower average latency, as well as slightly better transfer rates. Current drives peak at aroung the 100MB/s mark so SATA I is sufficient for most applications.

    Quote Originally Posted by arthurleung
    If its for a system disk, you should not turn on NCQ because it lags the desktop. It deprioritize the system files so the CPU actually gets the system data LATER, which means slower system response when you're copy/read/writing large files. Although those files indeed transfer slightly faster.
    I'd be interested to see a source for that! NCQ doesn't prioritise per se, it simply re-arranges requests so that those closer together on the disk are read in a chunk. If you send these commands:

    Read block A then X then B

    it'll re-arrange to:

    Read block A then B then X

    so that it minimises head-travel distance. (Simplistic example, but it gets the point across.)

    I havn't heard a single report of NCQ slowing down drives, there have been many reports of significant performance increases, especially in multitasking applications.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Woodchuck2000
    NCQ was included in the original SATA spec as was Hot-Swapping. It simply wasn't implemented in a number of early drives.
    Indeed, my SATA I WD800JD drives show up as hot swappable!

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    How do yo u actually disable NQC?
    Me want Ultrabook


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    Quote Originally Posted by sawyen
    How do yo u actually disable NQC?
    I'm not certain but I think it's enabled by default. However, go to Device manager, expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" right click on one of the standard controllers, go to properties. Click the tab with the channel that your drive is on and see if your drive is there. If it's not then try another controller. If it is, it will say using a tick box if command queuing is enabled or not. If its enabled and you can use the tick box, just untick it. I think that's how you do it, there may be another way however.

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