Is SATA 150 really that much faster than IDE 133

[AMDCrazy]

Thinking of going to SATA for upgrade but is it that much faster than IDE?

 

[imported_Kensai]

You don't need SATA.. Hard drives barely push 60MB/s let alone 133MB/s..

 

[ai42]

There are only two real incentives to SATA right now is Native Command Queuing which very few drives/controllers support right now, and the WDC Raptors. There isn't really a compelling reason other than those items to move to SATA the interface is faster no doubt, but most drives cannot push the data that fast.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Don't forget hotswap!

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: AMDCrazy
Thinking of going to SATA for upgrade but is it that much faster than IDE?

The interface itself is, but that means nothing when you're restricted by hardware. That said, hard drives that work with SATA and IDE aren't very different internally at this point, which means little/no speed upgrade.

How much faster it is will depend on how old your drives are. If you upgrade to SATA or IDE today, they will both be around the same speeds though.

Besides speed, also consider the better cables, hot-swap ability, and possibly NCQ. If none of those mean anything to you (and they probably won't), then IDE would be just as fine for right now. In the future though, IDE would eventually become obsolete, but SATA might be at that point as well. We don't know.

Gigabyte is also making RAM disks that use SATA, and use it to its full potential, if you're interested in that.

 

[AMDCrazy]

What makes the hard drives faster anyway is the buffer cache right. I have 2mb cache on mine right now and wonder if going to 8mb cache will actually be faster.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: AMDCrazy
What makes the hard drives faster anyway is the buffer cache right. I have 2mb cache on mine right now and wonder if going to 8mb cache will actually be faster.

A little performance gain but it's not worth getting a new hard drive unless you're going to get one anyways.

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: AMDCrazy
What makes the hard drives faster anyway is the buffer cache right. I have 2mb cache on mine right now and wonder if going to 8mb cache will actually be faster.

Much faster. The cache does have some to do with it, rotational speed and platter density matter too.

Hard drives aren't too expensive these days, I'd upgrade if I were you.

I personally like Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (I have two of these in RAID as my main workspace). For my system drive I have a Western Digital Raptor 74GB, which is arguably the fastest SATA drive out right now. (In some situations)

 

[AMDCrazy]

So right now the hard drive in my system isn't a bottleneck? Being 2mb cache and all.

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: AMDCrazy
So right now the hard drive in my system isn't a bottleneck? Being 2mb cache and all.

It's not the cache alone really, but consider that when drives were made with 2MB cache as standard, they likely were lacking in the other areas that dictate hard drive speed as well, in comparison to today.

I can't say whether or not YOUR hard drive(s) is/are a bottleneck.

Only get one if you have the money, I wouldn't consider it a bad buy.

 

[AMDCrazy]

Hey thanks to all the replies and especially to Continuity28 for breaking it down like that for me....

looks like I'll stay with IDE for now.