Can PATA benefit from an SSD?

[pantsaregood]

Most modern SSDs are SATA, I'm aware of that. SATA 3.0 is 6.0Gb/s. PATA speeds peak out at 1066Mb/s.

However, hard drive performance on PATA and SATA is nearly identical from what I've seen. Could someone with only PATA benefit from an SSD?

I ask because I have an old system with a dead hard drive in it. It only supports PATA, and if I'm going to put a new drive in it, I want something good.

 

[boochi]

You can get a ide to sata adapter for cheap and you may be able to use a ssd in that system if the motherboard will recognize it. You would benefit from the low latency of the ssd but, the speed may be hampered by using the adapter.

 

[razel]

Yes, just don't spend too much money. I revived two PATA based laptops with a PATA Jmicron based SSD which cost $100 for 32GBs last year.

Since they're slow and expensive if you have a desktop, you're better off buying a PCI SATA controller. For a laptop if you're lucky to have the space you can try to cram an SSD and a PATA-SATA bridge. I did so with two laptops. Just the PCB internals of an Intel SSD and the PATA-SATA bridge cost about $160 total and completely worth it since the SSD is SATA and can be used in the new system whenever that laptop breaks.

 

[pantsaregood]

Well, the computer in question can't take another PCI card, so controller card is out of the question. A SATA -> PATA adapter seems reasonable, though.

 

[razel]

Best of luck with the SATA to PATA adapter. I tried two cheaper ones with a SATA HDD before. Both throttled the HDD to 66MB/s. A little disappointing, but it's still plenty of speed. More likely the adapters were just too cheap.

 

[pantsaregood]

I don't know about SSDs, but I know HDDs generally have a hard time coming anywhere near 66MB/s. Even with all of the bandwidth IDE/SATA provide, the mechanical parts of HDDs just kill their speed.

 

[shortylickens]

I don't know about SSDs, but I know HDDs generally have a hard time coming anywhere near 66MB/s. Even with all of the bandwidth IDE/SATA provide, the mechanical parts of HDDs just kill their speed.

I saw genuine improvements going from ATA 33 to 66 to 100 to 133 and then again going from PATA to SATA.
Also saw a huge boost going from HDD to SSD.


As for OP: There is no point in ever going back to PATA. The plugs are bigger, you need to worry about Master/Slave, and its slower besides.

Forget about it.

 

[pantsaregood]

I saw genuine improvements going from ATA 33 to 66 to 100 to 133 and then again going from PATA to SATA.
Also saw a huge boost going from HDD to SSD.


As for OP: There is no point in ever going back to PATA. The plugs are bigger, you need to worry about Master/Slave, and its slower besides.

Forget about it.

I've never seen a difference in speed on PATA vs. SATA hard drives. They generally benchmark about the same as far as reads/writes go. I also wouldn't be "going back." My current PC doesn't even have a PATA port.

 

[dac7nco]

PATA and SATA performance were only comparable when SATA was first introduced. PATA has several potential bottlenecks, which you'll notice when you're doing heavy disk I/O while burning a disc (SATA also has almost zero CPU overhead).

That being said, I had some success awhile back with a 32GB PATA Trancend SSD on a Pentium-M laptop, which showed no signs of performance degradation over about a year. Odds are an adapter wouldn't fit into a laptop, but on the Desktop... why not?

I figure you're upgrading a P4 or earlier, so I guarantee you would at least see a snappier desktop. Sequential speeds will SUCK; use it as a bare minimum OS drive, with apps only.

Any possibility of freeing a PCI slot? That would change... a lot of options.

Daimon

 

[Emulex]

sata ii - native command queue - HUGE HUGE benefit for SSD.
sata 2 - 300mb/s minus overhead xfer speed. (250-270)
pata - ATA 100 = 100 minute overhead. ATA 133 is actually kinda rare to find these days.

so a very fast 7200rpm drive could equal sequential write/read - no NCQ levels that - latency is the main gain. a huge one but you are not going to get the WOW of sata2 hard drive to SSD.

 

[zuffy]

I didn't even know there is a SATA to PATA adapter until reading this thread. Got me thinking since I have an Intel X25M 80GB G1 SSD laying around and my Dell 700m can benefit from it. Too bad there is no room to fit the SSD with the adapter. Maybe I should checkout one of my old Thinkpad if it will fit or not.

 

[shortylickens]

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