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New Hard Drive, need help please!

L

leegroves86

Senior member
Hello Hello

Tonight I need some help on buying a hard drive. I have been getting into photo editing and gaming a lot lately. I want my new HDD to be my main drive of course and use my current (old) one for backup of important documents etc. I don't need a monster 400gb drive or nothing just 120 Gb+ I was thinking

I want a SATA II HDD With NCQ support (I have a new A8N-E so it will support it) Which brand HDD is the best? Shopping on newegg for SATA II HDD there are 8 listed and none of them specifically mention NCQ support... Am I missing it or what?

I don't really want to go with a SATA I because it's on its way out. I know everybody says that you can't begin to max out SATA I limit and that SATA II is just useless but still, I want one...am I crazy?

Is there any chance there is a 10k SATA II HDD in the works anywhere??? Guess on when one might be released?

Any comments or opions might help.
 
SATA II will be of no benefit to you, but none the less, I just purchased this Hitachi drive and am very pelased with it. It has NCQ as well.
 
Originally posted by: leegroves86
I don't really want to go with a SATA I because it's on its way out. I know everybody says that you can't begin to max out SATA I limit and that SATA II is just useless but still, I want one...am I crazy?
Click to expand...

It's like saying I don't want a ATA100 because it's on its way out when ATA133 drives started appearing. Com'on, SATA and SATAII makes zero differences.
 
There isn't one, nor will there be. It appears the SATA market is in a bit of flux right now, where nobody really seems to know what is going on, including the companies involved with making the products. That link above says nothing, and clears up nothing. I don't see any reason why AT even bother to post such an article in the first place.

It was completely retarded for the SATA-IO to change its name so late in the process when even hard drive manufacturers who are part of the group are using SATA II to describe their drives and in their press releases. All it's doing is adding confusion where there shouldn't be any. Browsing through SATA-IO's website, they don't even have a 2nd generation spec posted, just bits and pieces of specs for specific features that are supposed to be included in it. It's possible the reason they are making the feature list so ambiguous is because they themselves still don't know what the is going to be included in the final spec since there appears to be no actual SATA 2.0 spec at this time.

Looks like ATA-2 all over again, where it it took so long for the official committee to put the spec together that all the hard drive manufacturers either made up their own 2nd generation spec with their own features (WD created EIDE, Seagate created FAST-ATA), or picked sides.
 
Originally posted by: flloyd
Originally posted by: anarchyreigns
Originally posted by: flloyd
Originally posted by: anarchyreigns
Originally posted by: leegroves86




Shopping on newegg for SATA II HDD there are 8 listed and none of them specifically mention NCQ support...
Click to expand...

That's because SATA II includes NCQ.
Click to expand...

Not True.
Click to expand...


Show me a drive labelled and sold as SATA II that doesn't support NCQ.
Click to expand...


http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=137
Click to expand...



That drive has NCQ, as does every drive listed on Newegg as being SATA II. Every drive that is marketed as being SATA II has NCQ. The reason they don't explicitly state that is because the SATA II extensions to the SATA spec specifically include NCQ.
 
I'm just going by the Anandtech article refrenced above that states that, "Just because the SATA-IO committee identifies capabilities like NCQ and Hot Plug, they are not required by any standard." Also, unlike the other SATA-II drives on Newegg the WD dive makes no mention what so ever anywhere on their site as to NCQ capabilities. Seeing as all of the other SATA-II drives prominently advertise this a major feature it leads me to belive that the WD drive does not in fact have NCQ. Otherwise that would have to be some reference, somewhere to it as this would otherwise leave them at a competitive disadvantage to the other SATA-II makers who proudly advertise this feature.
 
Originally posted by: Pariah
There isn't one, nor will there be. It appears the SATA market is in a bit of flux right now, where nobody really seems to know what is going on, including the companies involved with making the products. That link above says nothing, and clears up nothing. I don't see any reason why AT even bother to post such an article in the first place.

It was completely retarded for the SATA-IO to change its name so late in the process when even hard drive manufacturers who are part of the group are using SATA II to describe their drives and in their press releases. All it's doing is adding confusion where there shouldn't be any. Browsing through SATA-IO's website, they don't even have a 2nd generation spec posted, just bits and pieces of specs for specific features that are supposed to be included in it. It's possible the reason they are making the feature list so ambiguous is because they themselves still don't know what the is going to be included in the final spec since there appears to be no actual SATA 2.0 spec at this time.

Looks like ATA-2 all over again, where it it took so long for the official committee to put the spec together that all the hard drive manufacturers either made up their own 2nd generation spec with their own features (WD created EIDE, Seagate created FAST-ATA), or picked sides.
Click to expand...


It's not really that confusing as far as NCQ goes. SATA II/SATA-IO are the same thing and any drive claiming to be either will have NCQ. What SATA II/SATA-IO isn't, however, is a speed spec.
 
Originally posted by: flloyd
I'm just going by the Anandtech article refrenced above that states that, "Just because the SATA-IO committee identifies capabilities like NCQ and Hot Plug, they are not required by any standard." Also, unlike the other SATA-II drives on Newegg the WD dive makes no mention what so ever anywhere on their site as to NCQ capabilities. Seeing as all of the other SATA-II drives prominently advertise this a major feature it leads me to belive that the WD drive does not in fact have NCQ. Otherwise that would have to be some reference, somewhere to it as this would otherwise leave them at a competitive disadvantage to the other SATA-II makers who proudly advertise this feature.
Click to expand...


None of the drives listed on Newegg as being SATA II specify that they include ncq...yet every one of them listed there does, including the WD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...xPrice=&SubCategory=14&Submit=Property

Look up the reviews for any SATA II drive and it will mention that it has ncq, and the WD SE's do.
 
SATA II/SATA-IO are the same thing and any drive claiming to be either will have NCQ.
Click to expand...

The problem is neither is a spec for anything, one is a no longer existing committee that never finished the SATA 2.0 spec, the 2nd is a newly formed committee that hasn't done anything yet.

What SATA II/SATA-IO isn't, however, is a speed spec.
Click to expand...

Correct, because SATA II does not exist, so it isn't anything.

There is no 2nd generation SATA spec, only a SATA 1.x spec with extensions. That's where the confusion lies. Since there is no official standard, companies are just adding whatever features they feel like and calling it SATA II, and none of them can be wrong, since there is no SATA II.
 
Originally posted by: Pariah


Correct, because SATA II does not exist, so it isn't anything.

There is no 2nd generation SATA spec, only a SATA 1.x spec with extensions.
Click to expand...

Yes SATA II does exists, not only as the SATA II/SATA-IO organization, but also as SATA II extensions to SATA 1.0. Those extensions specify, amongst other things, NCQ.


Also btw, they're the same organization...they just simply changed the name rather than being a "newly formed commitee".
 
Originally posted by: flloyd
Originally posted by: anarchyreigns
Originally posted by: leegroves86




Shopping on newegg for SATA II HDD there are 8 listed and none of them specifically mention NCQ support...
Click to expand...

That's because SATA II includes NCQ.
Click to expand...

Not True.
Click to expand...

I agree with your "not true" regarding NCQ. What's confusing is that the article you pointed to states that "SATA II" is just the old name for SATA-IO, which is the acronym for the organization that specifies the interface protocol. Therefore (the article states), "SATA-II" doesn't mean a 3GB/s transfer rate, but rather refers to ALL interface protocols defined by the organization.

Yet when (for example) I check the specs on the "SATA-II" HDs on the Western Digital (SE16 series HDs) and Hitachi (T7K250 series HDs) websites, both use "3GB/s" as the interface speed, and both indicate a "Maximum interface transfer rate" of 300MB/s, as compared with the 150MB/s for the SATA HDs.

So I'm confused. Do these new SATA-II HDs offer enhanced performance as compared with SATA HDs or don't they?
 
OKay, my understanding of it was that all SATAII drives have NCQ. And while 300Mb/s offers very little extra over 150MB/s, NCQ will speed up your access times a bit.

RoD
 
Just wanted to confirm that the WD, as I claimed earlier, doesn't include NCQ as a feature. As I said NCQ is an option of SATA-II and is not required and WD obviously chose not to include it. See here.
 
Originally posted by: anarchyreigns
Originally posted by: flloyd
Originally posted by: anarchyreigns
Originally posted by: leegroves86




Shopping on newegg for SATA II HDD there are 8 listed and none of them specifically mention NCQ support...
Click to expand...

That's because SATA II includes NCQ.
Click to expand...

Not True.
Click to expand...


Show me a drive labelled and sold as SATA II that doesn't support NCQ.
Click to expand...


The Western Digital 2500JS is SATA-II but does not support NCQ
 
Originally posted by: shira

So I'm confused. Do these new SATA-II HDs offer enhanced performance as compared with SATA HDs or don't they?
Click to expand...

No.
There are no SATA drives that can exceed 150MB/sec anyway, so 300MB/sec is.. well, pointless at the meantime.
It's similar to the police raising the speed limit to 200mph when your car can only do 80mph.

Oh, and NCQ decreases performance in some tests. Unless you are running a multiple-simultaneous-connection (aka. heavy load coupled with high queue depths), neither NCQ or TCQ will offer any benefit for the home users, except for one or two specialised tests that are not representative of regular desktop use.
 
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