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What's the advantage of SATA drives??

J

jamori

Member
I was reading a motherboard review earlier today which tested data throughput with IDE RAID, SATA RAID, and individual SATA and IDE drives. In the majority of the benchmarks, the IDE implementation came out faster, with the note that:
As expected, the standalone SATA drive performance was much lower than that of the IDE primary slave drive results
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note that both IDE and SATA drives are 7200RPM

why is this? I thought SATA had a max. throughput of 150MB/sec as opposed to IDE's 133. If it is expected that an individual IDE drive would beat an individual SATA drive, and an IDE raid (depending on how the cables are attached) can be configured to outperform a SATA raid, why do we even have the SATA specification?

I was just thrown off by this earlier and was hoping someone could clear up my confusion. I certainly hope I didn't pay extra money for my SATA drive for decreased performance over an IDE solution.
 
Let me have a go, I think the thing is the drives these days arent able to utilize the advantage of SATA speeds. Therefore the 150 to 133 difference is really irrevelant.
 
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Originally posted by: DotheDamnTHing
the only advantage i see for SATA drives (except the raptor) is smaller cables
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thats what i would say also, also the reason i didnt get a mobo the supported SATA, no need for me to spend money on a dirve that is slower, a raptor woudl be nice but picking u 500GB worth or them would cost wat to much
 
The major advantage of SATA is the implementation of Tagged Command Queuing. This allows the drive to process multiple requests at once which increases performance. SCSI has always had this and now SATA can play too. No, not all drives have this. The 74GB Raptor was the first drive to have this implemented in firmware and no other drive to my knowledge have this yet.
 
Originally posted by: DotheDamnTHing
the only advantage i see for SATA drives (except the raptor) is smaller cables
Click to expand...

Also lower power requirements and no Master/Slave configuration to mess around with.
 
I seem to recall reading that only Seagate offers native SATA drives. Hot swapping capability seems a great advantage.
 
Originally posted by: nightowl
The major advantage of SATA is the implementation of Tagged Command Queuing. This allows the drive to process multiple requests at once which increases performance. SCSI has always had this and now SATA can play too. No, not all drives have this. The 74GB Raptor was the first drive to have this implemented in firmware and no other drive to my knowledge have this yet.
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It unfortunately doesn't work, perhaps due to the lack of controllers that will cooperate. Here's the supporting evidence: X-Bit labs looks into it in depth

The third graph shows a SCSI drive with TCQ off (flat green line) and on (red curved line). The editors' tests of the 74GB Raptor versus the 36GB Raptor, with TCQ enabled and disabled, found no such improvements of the supposedly-TCQ-empowered 74GB model over the 36GB model when they tried them with TCQ enabled versus disabled. I think it's probably that they need cooperation from the controller, or maybe as the author said, ATA command queueing is so worthless that it doesn't do much even when it is working 😀
 
Originally posted by: nightowl
The major advantage of SATA is the implementation of Tagged Command Queuing. This allows the drive to process multiple requests at once which increases performance. SCSI has always had this and now SATA can play too. No, not all drives have this. The 74GB Raptor was the first drive to have this implemented in firmware and no other drive to my knowledge have this yet.
Click to expand...

TCQ didn't make it into SATA I, which is why no controllers support it, and only a couple drives do. It did make it into the SATA II spec so it should be more common in the next generation of SATA II hardware. Hot swapping didn't make it into SATA I either, but will be in SATA II along with new cable standards to support it. SATA II is what SATA I should have been, but even with the years of delays, most of the interesting new features didn't make it into the first generation.
 
The smaller cables are one advantage. Another (but I'm not very sure of it) is that the SATA drives have commands at lower voltage than the PATA drives (5V for the later). This increase the power consumption on the hard drive, and on the controller also.
Other than that, even a 2 PATA disks array have problems saturating a ATA100 bus.
One more thing: the SATA controller is sometime off the PCI bus, so more bandwidth is preserved for the rest of the components. This helps with response time during bursts of hard drive activity, especially of multiple hard drives activity.
(but I might be wrong)

Calin
 
Looking back, I think Storage Review said that they needed a capable controller to enable TCQ. It has been awhile since I read the review, but I know that they mentioned TCQ and how the 74GB Raptor had it in firmware.
 
Cables that easily fall out of the drive. A required driver to install the hard drive. They will have to get to the point where the drives are superior to Ultra ATA or they are the only hard drive that will work with a motherboard, or they are significantly cheaper than a normal IDE drive before I accept them. How come a CDROM can boot from a motherboard with no extra effort but a hard drive can not?
 
Originally posted by: Pariah
TCQ didn't make it into SATA I, which is why no controllers support it, and only a couple drives do. It did make it into the SATA II spec so it should be more common in the next generation of SATA II hardware. Hot swapping didn't make it into SATA I either, but will be in SATA II along with new cable standards to support it. SATA II is what SATA I should have been, but even with the years of delays, most of the interesting new features didn't make it into the first generation.
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When is SATAII scheduled to come out?
 
I have a small case but not micro-atx let me mind you, and the ide cables were a pain in the neck. They're very wide and they just get all coiled up when you shove em in a tight area.
 
smaller cable size and longer cables are nice too. however the sata connectors are weak and if nudged momentarily disconnect. I bought 2 raptors and one of them broke off at the drive connector and was unusable. I am careful with my hdds so this was a shock. I will wait until they redefine the sata connector system before I buy another sata drive
 
Originally posted by: piasabird
Cables that easily fall out of the drive. A required driver to install the hard drive. They will have to get to the point where the drives are superior to Ultra ATA or they are the only hard drive that will work with a motherboard, or they are significantly cheaper than a normal IDE drive before I accept them. How come a CDROM can boot from a motherboard with no extra effort but a hard drive can not?
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>>I've never had problems with SATA cables, and the software thing is not true. You can install a drive rthat is attached to a controller whose drivers are installed through Disk Manager in Windows.

SATA has much lower signaling voltage, much lower power requirements (mainly because of signaling, again) much easier to connect (plug and play, instead of the Master/Slave nonsense). It also allows for longer cables (the maximum for PATA is 3 feet, I think...maximum for SATA is 3meters...maybe, not sure but it *is* longer, which in turn helps with installation, motherboard layouts...it's cheaper to implement than PATA (40 traces v. 8 traces), it is easier to create multiple channels than PATA (that is, for the cost of 1 PATA channel (that's 2 drives) you can get 5 SATA devices (cost in Mobo real-estate). SATA is a brand-spanking new technology, though and so prices are high. Luckily we don't have to put up with this "2x more expensive" nonsense that comes with DDRII. When it comes down to it, the HDD manufacturers don't have drives that can fill up *any* bus, so performance difference is a non-issue (unless you are looking to fork over for a Raptor, of coruse)...you have to decide if the price premium (between 5-20 USD in my experience) is worth the advantages in feature set I've listed. To me, it generally is. Others? Maybe not.
 
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