Hard Drive Speed Problems

[boGardoN]

i have a ATA133 Maxtor 160GB harddrive. I used an IDE --> SATA converter.....but when i do speed tests it tells me my theoretical speed is 150 which is what SATA should run at.....but my burst speed is only 100.....and my sustained is 60.......is there something wrong with my settings? or is that just....normal? and is there anyway to make it SATAII or anything faster?

 

[Some1ne]

That's about normal for a single 7200 RPM drive. The "theoretical" speed of 150 MB/sec is the speed of the SATA link itself, and even costly SATA drives like the WD Raptor do not hit 150 MB/sec transfer rates, burst or otherwise. Also, since your drive is natively ATA133, it's theoretical maximum is probably still 133 MB/sec, even though you have it plugged into a faster interface.

 

[boGardoN]

so the speeds i am getting is the exact same as waht i would get if i were to use my IDE cable instead? except that my theortetical speed will be 133.....and my burst will still be 100....and my sustained will still be 60? and sorry i forgot to add that my HD was 7200 rpm.......any further enlightment will be very much appreciated!! thxxxxxxxx

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. There's no performance difference between PATA133 and SATA150. The bus never bottlenecks the drive. It's not a problem, it's just the design of the hard drive that limits performance.

 

[boGardoN]

sorry guys....one more question......if my HD is limiting it.....then waht is the point of getting an IDE to SATA coverter??

 

[Some1ne]

There isn't much of one, although there are a lot of mainboards shipping with an obscene number of SATA ports (like 8) and only the two standard IDE channels (which supports up to 4 drives), so one reason may be that your system already has two IDE disks, and 2 optical ones, so the only free port for a new drive is a SATA port. Another potential reason (depending on how the adapter is implemented) may be to get rid to the ugly parallel ribbon cable in favor of a nice, sleek SATA one (which improves airflow and is easier to work with).

Other than that though, there's not much point, and yeah, the adapter isn't going to improve your performance any.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: boGardoN
sorry guys....one more question......if my HD is limiting it.....then waht is the point of getting an IDE to SATA coverter??

Small thin cable as compared to a large obstructive wide ribbon cable is the only real reason to get an adapter.

 

[Jiggz]

Originally posted by: Varun

Originally posted by: boGardoN
sorry guys....one more question......if my HD is limiting it.....then waht is the point of getting an IDE to SATA coverter??

Small thin cable as compared to a large obstructive wide ribbon cable is the only real reason to get an adapter.

:thumbsup:

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Yeah, I <3 my 3 SATA drives. The cables are so small and easy to work with. I would hate running a RAID 5 with PATA drives in a cramped mid-tower case.