Best SATA drive?

[quarryman]

I'm thinking of picking a S-ATA hard drive soon. In particular the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB. I already own a Seagate Barracuda IV and am really happy with how quiet it is.

Is the SATA really worth it? Its not much more than a normal 7200 ATA. This drive will be going into a Shuttle and noise and heat are a concern.

Is there much problem running a SATA and an ATA drive together? the Shuttle supports RAID, is this of any benefit? I'm not too sure what it is (I'm off to look up now).

TIA

q

[dgr]

my raptor is damn fast. so yes i would say they are.

if its in a shuttle then i would say: use the sata - you'll benefit from the tiny cables. you may also consider putting the existing hdd on the sata (you would need a £10 adaptor) to shorten that cable as well.

On drives other than the raptor, you aren't really going to see a huge performance boost.

RAID allows you to run 2 drives together as one (better performance, but if one goes you loose ALL data) or mirror them both (if one goes, you don't loose your data but you only have half the disc space...).

For your interestes, forget it for now.

basically, go for it. why not?

dgr

[TooNice]

Unless you go for the Raptor, go SATA only if:
- You want nicer, thinner cable.
- Your IDE channels are full.

Some have mentioned lower CPU usage.. But I am not convinced and haven't really seen any tests showeing that.

In other word, do not expect the SATA version of the same drive to outperform its PATA version.

[TiG]

TooNice, the lower CPU usage is something thats well established, go and pick up a copy of latest pc pro, its even got the same information there. I think tomshardware has also got an article up on it too.

And I hate to say it but i disagree the overall effect of a sata drive at the moment is a slight improvement. The sata technology is maturing slowly and buying a drive now is going to be slightly quicker than the ones when they originally came out.

If the drive is going in a shuttle sata is the only option imo, it makes things so much tidier and you won't regret it for the improved temps and airflow possible in the case.

TiG

[quarryman]

SATA it is so. The price of a getting SATA as opposed to PATA ian't much extra so I'll go for it.

If the drive is going in a shuttle sata is the only option imo, it makes things so much tidier and you won't regret it for the improved temps and airflow possible in the case.

But is it quieter?

you may also consider putting the existing hdd on the sata (you would need a £10 adaptor) to shorten that cable as well.

So they are on the one line? ie a slave/master config? This seems tidier but is there any loss of performance because of this?

Thanks for the replies.

[TiG]

Sata and Pata have no difference on the noise of the Drive, The hard disk will still be the same noise. Sata use 1 drive per channel so they are all masters of they're channels, if you use the pata/sata adapter the hard disk needs to be set as master, (i found this out to my cost when setting up my sata raid 0 array with my pata 133 drives)

Sure its not going to be quite as quick as a normal sata cable but i've not noticed anything slow with my setup and i'm using the abit converter.

TiG

[Volcano]

I forund that SATA is actually slower than IDE and the cpu usage you save is minimal and aint worth bothering about.
Only benefit i see atm is having nice neat cables.

[spazman]

How can SATA be slower?

[TiG]

Originally posted by Volcano
I forund that SATA is actually slower than IDE and the cpu usage you save is minimal and aint worth bothering about.
Only benefit i see atm is having nice neat cables.

Slower in which figure as there are 4 that are key imo.

Slowest write, Fastest write
Slowest read and fastest read imo.

I've generally found that although the fastest read and write speeds are not hugely quicker than pata, the slowest read and write speeds are significantly quicker, almost double, up from 15mb/s to 30mb/s

This is where i think where most of the benchmarks forget to look at and why sata hasn't been adopted on a much wider scale that it currently has.

TiG

[SilentDeath]

i think the problems with sata are related a lot to the controlers available. the si3112 is probobly the most common as most mobos with sata use it. ive heard its one of the slowest... can any one recommend a decent pci sata controler, as i need another for my other drive, as there so cheap (about £15?) i mayaswell get one for the nicer cables, as ive got a spare converter atm.

i think maxtor sata drives internally use ata100 (on the maxblast soft mine said udma mode 5, which is same as my 120gb pata using the converter). drives wont need more than 100mb/s though, so i doubt this harms performance atall exept in burst read from cache...

[Rythmic]

A good round up of the current crop of SATA drives (which are mostly PATA drives with a SATA convertor on the drives circuit board) can be found here:

http://www.storagereview.com/article...5VLSA80_1.html

[Agent]

The drives not native SATA and uses a PATA to SATA converter - its basicly a PATA drive with a Abit converter built in (uses a SI chip iirc), so on this particular drive, you wont gain any speed by using it over a PATA drive. It still has to be converted to a PATA data stream for the drive to understand it.

[quarryman]

A good round up of the current crop of SATA drives (which are mostly PATA drives with a SATA convertor on the drives circuit board) can be found here:

http://www.storagereview.com/articl...25VLSA80_1.html

well the Seagate 7200.7 got a great review. it is the 2nd quietest and has the lowest running temperature of all the drives tested.

I'm happy with that.