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Serial ATA, and its "current" usefulness?

K

KrillBee

Golden Member
SATA has been out for awhile now, and we all know it has the capability for better performance than ATA, as well as more compact cables, ability to have longer cables, hot swappable drives, etc.

But is the performance difference really that noticable currently? With most hard drives being stuck at rpm speeds of 7200-10000, the only thing to gain through ATA150 and ATA300, is better burst speeds.

I understand lots of people and OEMs have switched to using SATA hard drives. However, there are few optical drives made which use SATA, therefore most mainboards include both SATA and ATA.

It just seems like the adoption of SATA is too early to be considered the most practical. I dont see much in terms of performance increase over IDE, just now there are 2 standards instead of one, making things a little more complicated.
 
Even if performance didn't differ at all between PATA and SATA I would choose SATA every time. In building a system it is a much nicer and easier way of ensuring a clean build.

With todays components chucking out vast amounts of heat SATA cables allow for much better airflow than PATA ones.

As for performance SATA is slightly quicker for multi drive raid sytems, especially when 2 drives are bursting onto the bus.
 
To add on to George Powell's excellent post.

All the new hard drive technologies (bigger buffers, more capacity, parallel recording, etc) are being put on SATA drives and not the older IDE drives.

Neither IDE nor SATA drives (single drive) have yet to break the 100MB/s transfer rate barrier, let alone 133/150/300.

Manufacturers have been throwing around those theoretical speeds for years now. RAID is where it's at if you want fast transfer rates. (SCSI isn't part of this discussion.)
 

Just installed my first SATA drive

Wow. Very slick easy to install.

Issue: Connectors look VERY fragile. Western Digital "fixed" this on the drive side with a huge PATA size connector but MB side still looks pretty weak.

I'd still use PATA for backup drives in an external enclosure but for any future system builds, SATA is the way to go.
 
SATA has lots of "extras" like hot swap, staggered startup etc.

However it doesn't give any real benifit to the home user other than the nicer cables, well that and the ability to have more than 4 devices without a PCI card. The controllers won't cost much/any more so why not build SATA based hard drives?
 
The SATA cord's width and cable-gami-ness is reason alone to choose over IDE. I had to go from SATA to IDE (thanks ASsRock), and even with "bundled" IDE cables(forgot the name🙁), they are still very hard to move around.
 
rounded IDE cables were nice and clean too, and permitted good air flow 🙂 granted SATA is better for those purposes though.

I like the style alright (except for the new stupid power connectors (arrgg, what did those accomplish??) but sometimes its annoying with having the IDE and SATA worlds coexisting with each other.
It'd be nice if they made more SATA optical drives.
 
I have an entire SATA rig.. have had it this way for 1 1/2 years now.

Saves space, makes it easier to work on with the tiny cables, makes it much less cumbersome since I run two HDDs for RAID..
that plus my DVD dual layer burner being on SATA makes it very nice to be legacy free. No FDD here, but I do have a external USB floppy in case I need that.
 
Yah i wish more Sata 5.25 devices came out. Would love a couple dvd burners with sata. It seems logical from a price standpoint even if performance is not there.
 
i wonder if they are ever going to expand floppy drives into something other than IDE and USB? Like if they will make SATA floppy drives? lol. if not then maybe motherboards will just have to keep using that oldschool floppy connector years from now.
 
Whether SATA is needed or not is irrelevent.

The reality is, IDE is nearly dead.

Newer Intel 965 mobos are phasing out IDE, & while it makes things challenging for us with IDE drives, it's good to see a switch to SATA for everything.

One huge benefit is that each drive is on its own channel, which for heavy HDDs users is great.
 
I just wished they made more heavy duty SATA connectors. They don't only look fragile, they ARE fragile. The first time I installed my Seagate 7200.8 SATA drive, a part of the connector on the HDD came off and got stuck in the cable. I was never able to dislodge it from the cable ever since. Good thing I got the HDD RMAed.
 
frankly, i'd get SATA just to get rid of the jumpers. i hated that. but SATA cables are thinner and can be longer which let's you do your wiring better with better airflow. plus, SATA has other benefits like NCQ and being hot swappable.
 
Originally posted by: R3MF
Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
i wished SATA DVD burners would be more mainstream and cheaper..
Click to expand...

there is a £25 SATA DVD burner from Samsung that is widely available.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up, the next question is: Is it any good 😉

*toddles off to cdfreaks*
 
Originally posted by: trikster2

Western Digital "fixed" this on the drive side with a huge PATA size connector but MB side still looks pretty weak.
Click to expand...

The thing about this connector that WD throws in with their drives is that it covers up the SATA power connector, forcing you to use a Molex connector. I'm pretty sure the reason they made it that was is so that you don't accidently connect up both the Molex and SATA power connectors at the same time. I prefered to use the SATA connector that my power supply supports, so I had to use my mobo SATA data cable instead of that clunky WD one.

Originally posted by: ForumMaster

SATA has other benefits like NCQ and being hot swappable
Click to expand...

I recently read a review on the 150GB Raptor, and it was actually slower in most desktop apps with command queuing enabled. Not much of a benny for most users. As for the hot swappability, I don't think most desktop motherboards currently supports this feature.
 
Originally posted by: rallyhard
As for the hot swappability, I don't think most desktop motherboards currently supports this feature.
Click to expand...

Most current ones do, my old A7N8X doesnt, but i can't think of any conroe capable board or AM2 board that can't. I think the same goes for 939 too, but i'd have to check up on it.

It's been a feature since Nforce4 came around http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/7485
http://www.alienware.com/product_detail...Fs/nForce%204%20Serial%20ATA%20300.pdf

I think the SIS 755 chipset can do it too, but can't find a good resource for you on google.
 
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Originally posted by: rallyhard
As for the hot swappability, I don't think most desktop motherboards currently supports this feature.
Click to expand...

Most current ones do, my old A7N8X doesnt, but i can't think of any conroe capable board or AM2 board that can't. I think the same goes for 939 too, but i'd have to check up on it.
Click to expand...

Ah, I stand corrected! Thanks.

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
my old A7N8X
Click to expand...

Nice board. I went with the ga-700n pro2.
 
How is SATA connectors fragile? I've installed SATA HDs many times and never broken the connector. Some people just have bear paws.
 
Originally posted by: Baked
How is SATA connectors fragile? I've installed SATA HDs many times and never broken the connector. Some people just have bear paws.
Click to expand...

They are fine for me to. I've put together this rig 4 or 5 times (3 SATA devices- 2 HDDS 1 DVD DL burner). Both reconnecting the cables to the board and to the devices themselves.
Thats about 30 times I've plugged in the same SATA device cables and not 1 broken.

Of course they arent going to be prepared for nuclear war or a bumbling fool.. sacrifices were made to size it down..
 
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