Ultra ATA vs SATA vs PATA

[techgamer]

Please help me understand the difference between these? Thanks

 

[ViRGE]

Ultra ATA = PATA = IDE = The wide flat cables that allow 2 drives to be hooked up to a single channel, with most boards having 2 IDE channels (for a total of 4 drives). The maximum transmission speed is limited to 100MB/133MB a second. This is legacy technology and is being phased out.

SATA = The skinny flat cables that connect a drive directly to the motherboard. The maximum transmission speed is 150MB/300MB a second. This is what is replacing IDE, and besides higher transmission speeds offers the benefit of the SATA cables not being so hard to route or blocking airflow like IDE cables do.

 

[techgamer]

Thank you I appreciate you responding. That makes sense. So what is eSata?

 

[ViRGE]

eSATA is a minor SATA variation that is for use as a connection method for external hard drives. The cables and connectors are a bit more rugged to allow longer cable lengths, and hot-plugging support is offered.

 

[themisfit610]

eSATA FTW for external hard drives. No USB 2.0 / 1394 bridge to slow you down!

Do remember though that if picking between an IDE and SATA drive for installing internally, there is usually little to no performance difference - as the increased bandwidth offered by the SATA interface (3 gigabits per second for SATA II) is not capable of being utilized by a single hard drive...

~MiSfit

 

[PowerRanger]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
eSATA FTW for external hard drives. No USB 2.0 / 1394 bridge to slow you down!

Do remember though that if picking between an IDE and SATA drive for installing internally, there is usually little to no performance difference - as the increased bandwidth offered by the SATA interface (3 gigabits per second for SATA II) is not capable of being utilized by a single hard drive...

~MiSfit

What about for external use? Is there a big performance difference?

 

[ViRGE]

Yes. eSATA is going to be much faster than USB or Firewire.

 

[PowerRanger]

Sorry, I meant is there a big difference btw. SATA and PATA if they were put into USB 2 or Firewire external enclosures.

 

[ViRGE]

No, they're both going to be bottlenecked by the USB/FW bus.

 

[PowerRanger]

Ah ok, thanks.

 

[Zepper]

Both SATA and PATA are IDE drives. PATA (parallel ATA) are the older type of drive that normally use the wide flat ribbon cables and the common 4-pin Molex power connection. SATA (serial ATA) drives use the narrow data cables and may use a new power connetor, though many still have the 4-pin Molex connector as well. Parallel data connections have to have at least 8 wires plus a couple for control signals while Serial data connections can be handled by only one wire or one out and one in for bidirectional commo.

The F-L (four letter) acronyms are more descriptive to avoid the confusion and/or extra effort of using just IDE or having to type "SATA IDE drives" or "PATA IDE drives". The eSATA spec includes different connectors, better shielding at the connector and higher current, line drivers for allowing longer cables. There are also "external SATA" connectors that are frequently mistakenly called eSATA, but they are generally just SATA extensions with few or none of the improvements of true eSATA so you have to watch your cable lengths and number of connections there.

Most SATA controllers support hot-swapping, but it's definite with eSATA. Ultra ATA designates 66 to 133 MHz PATA operation which requires the 80-wire/40-pin cables. With older spec PATA drives (33 MHz and down) you can use the old 40-wire/40-pin cables. SATA speeds are 150 or 300 MB/sec with data frequencies of approx. 1500 MHz or 3000MHz which is why you sometimes see them designated as SATA 1500 or 3000 (1.5k or 3k). Those GigaHertz frequencies are why shielding and connections are much more important for SATA and partly why SATA data cables are so stiff.

.bh.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Do remember though that if picking between an IDE and SATA drive for installing internally, there is usually little to no performance difference - as the increased bandwidth offered by the SATA interface (3 gigabits per second for SATA II) is not capable of being utilized by a single hard drive...

Not entirely true. If you connect a hard drive and a CD drive as master/slave on the same IDE cable, it slows both of them down considerably. Something about a lot of CD drives being ATA66/100 while hard drives are all 133 (this may no longer be true). There's also the problem of increases response time when two drives are on the same cable. It can't read/write to both at the same time, so it does one then the other, effectively cutting the bandwidth in half. This is why you're not supposed to have a RAID0 with 2 hard drives on the same IDE cable; the speed boost is marginal since the computer can still only read or write one of the drives at any given time.

SATA doesn't have that response time problem. Each drive is on its own cable, and one drive does not lag another.