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Serial ATA info?

C

computer

Platinum Member
Does anyone know if serial ATA150 requires special hard drives, or will it work with existing ATA100/ATA133 hard drives? Will this be included on any P4 mobo's? Anyone know of any ACCURATE time frame for serial ATA arrival? Is serial ATA suppose to render current ATA133 technology obsolete?

Thanks. 🙂
 
Serial ATA has a different interface, so either you will need a new drive, or use an adapter.

The initial run of motherboards equipped with Serial ATA should be shipping with IDE to SATA adapters; we should see the release of hard drives with SATA interfaces as soon as these boards are released. Seagate has announced the Barracuda V with SATA for a long time and WD has also announced its drive.

In the computer hardware industry, since when have dates been accurate?
 
There's a lot of info about the interface and drives in this thread over here. I think you might find the answers to some of your questions.
 
"Does anyone know if serial ATA150 requires special hard drives, or will it work with existing ATA100/ATA133 hard drives?"

? From a software point of view SerialATA is completely backwards compatible. As per the spec no new drivers are required (although some manufacturers/developers may include them in shipping products <shrug>). From a hardware stand point you can use ParallelATA (ATA100/133) drives on a SerialATA controller using an adapter.

? Currently the only SerialATA product on the market is the HighPoint RocketRaid 1520 which as you can see in this picture has HighPoints usual ATA133 RAID controller (HPT372A) and two little Marvell chips however these aren't SerialATA controllers they're SerialATA to Parallel converter chips. So the Highpoint 1520 isn't actually a SerialATA solution it is currently a ParallelATA solution with SerialATA support***. (This would also apply to the motherboards you're talking about). This also explains why those adapters from HighPoint are so large ... when someone releases a real SATA product the adapters will be small dongles or gender-bender type devices.

? Check here for more info:
RocketRaid 1520 Review
(***See page 5 of the review for information on the PATA-SATA-PATA conversion latency etc...)

? And check this thread for info from last week:
SerialATA Info

"Will this be included on any P4 mobo's?"

? Yes it will be included on all motherboard soon. Starting this fall you'll see motherboards with both SerialATA and ParallelATA, and then it will become mainstread. Also Intel is one of the major backers for SerialATA.


"Anyone know of any ACCURATE time frame for serial ATA arrival?"

? The best answer you're going to get at this point is "this fall". (Unless of course you count HighPoints RocketRaid 1520 which is already available).

" Is serial ATA suppose to render current ATA133 technology obsolete?"

? Yes that is the long term plan.

Thorin
 
Thanks. Newegg has these RocketRaid 1520's for 145 bucks. Wow. Doesn't seem worth it. Especially since it's a PCI card limited to 133mb/sec anyway. I don't see the point, other than skinny cables.....and I don't anyone that would pay $145 just to have thinner cables. Unless, it's SUSTAINED rate is much greater than ATA133.

I really don't see how this works. I always thought serial was much slower than parallel. With serial, all data must be "lined up" so to speak, but with parallel, it is not. Seems like serial would have serious bottleneck problems.
 
Thanks Thorin. I guess the bottom line is to go ahead and go with any purchase plans on P4 mobo's already on the market and WD800JB drives for example. Probably will be more than a year before these are out and working correctly with new PCI card firmware updates or mobo BIOS updates that work CORRECTLY, and at decent prices.
 
"I really don't see how this works. I always thought serial was much slower than parallel. With serial, all data must be "lined up" so to speak, but with parallel, it is not. Seems like serial would have serious bottleneck problems. "

? Ok here's my quick and dirty explanation. If you are only sending single bits "in a line" (as you said) then you don't have to worry about keeping in sync with other "lines" or cross talk from other "lines" and can transfer those single bits much much quicker with less errors and latency.

Thorin
 
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