When can I expect a SATAII HDD from Seagate?

[archcommus]

My current IDE 120 GB Seagate is still plenty of space for me, but I already know that I don't want to bother upgrading my HDD until I can go to SATA II. Just seems to be little point to going to SATA150. And, since I really only want to buy a Seagate, when can I expect SATAII drives from them?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Why do you need SATAII when current drives don't even hit like 100 mbps...

 

[Bona Fide]

If you're buying Seagate because of:

- Reputation
- Silence
- Lack of vibration
- Stability

I suggest you take a look at Samsung's Spinpoint series. They're much quieter, and just as stable/efficient.

 

[archcommus]

Well...you say current drives...what does that have to do with what a SATAII drive would run at?

Besides, that's not the point. What I was saying was, I know I don't want to upgrade UNTIL SATAII drives from Seagate are out.

 

[DerelictDev]

Well i want to know why do you want SATAII so badly on them? Its not like they offer any significant advantage over SATA150, Seagates SATA150's are equipped with NCQ and the works.

 

[archcommus]

No you're still not getting it. I'm not saying I really really want SATAII and not 150, I'm just saying that I'm FINE with my current HDD, and I probably won't bother upgrading until SATAII is out. Sheesh.

 

[DerelictDev]

O... well in that case, seagate already has SATAII drives out... The entire line-up of 7200.9 is SATAII i believe
http://www.seagate.com/pdf/marketing/PO-Cuda7200.9.pdf

EdIt: Actually i dont think its out just yet but will be sometimes soon. This store seems to sell Seagate SATAII drives but i think its a mistype.. dunno
http://www.thesmartshop.com.au/framepag...viewproducts.asp?cat=5&manufacturer=16

 

[archcommus]

Thanks.

That must be mistype, I really don't think they're out yet.

Now here's a question. Say I bought a SATAII drive in the relatively near future and used it with my nForce 4 Ultra SATAII ports. But let's say it didn't offer much of a performance gain right now. Would that improve with future chipsets, or would that only improve with future HDDs?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

It would improve with future hard drives. It'll be a looong time before we get a drive that can break the current 150 mbps SATA limit.

 

[archcommus]

So you're saying even though a current drive is branded SATA150, it will never be able to perform at that full speed even with future chipsets and software?

 

[shoRunner]

LOL the cable and the interface have nothing to do with how fast the drive will be. the fact of the matter is a 7200 rpm hard drive will never come anywhere close to 300MB/s let alone 150MB/s bar some revolutionary breakthrough in read technology. Even the 10,000rpm raptor drives top out at around 72MB/s average transfer rates, no where near regular ol' sata standards. the interface has never been the bottleneck.

 

[archcommus]

So what is the point in even having these SATA300 drives?

 

[shoRunner]

marketing

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: shoRunner
marketing

Ding ding ding!

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Yeah, people are like ZOMG SATA TWO!!!! You don't even need a SATA drive right now, the IDE bus is perfectly fine. Personally, though, I prefer SATA drives because the cables are so much neater

 

[anarchyreigns]

There are two main types of SATA drives. SATA 1.5G and SATA 3G. (and will everntually go to 6G) The difference between the two are the interface speeds. No drive comes close to either one of those speeds, so it doesn't make any difference whether a drive is SATA 1.5G or SATA 3G at this point in time.

SATA II is just a set of extensions that can be added to either a SATA 1.5G or SATA 3G drive, providing features such as Native Command Queuing, staggered spin up, etc., etc.

A SATA drive can have some, all, or none of the SATA II extensions.
In some cases the mobo's controller must support the extensions too, such as with Native Command Queuing. All nForce4 boards support some SATA II extensions, such as NCQ.

What SATA II does not mean, however, is a 3Gb/s transfer rate...amongst other things

Lastly, the advantage of going SATA vs. PATA, is that some of the newer drives in the future will be SATA only.

 

[archcommus]

So when will SATA150 REALLY be worth it, and when will SATAII REALLY be worth it?

 

[anarchyreigns]

They're already "worth it".

 

[archcommus]

SATAII?

 

[anarchyreigns]

Read above, SATA II are just extensions.

 

[DerelictDev]

Jesus christ man, just read Anandtech
http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2450

Everyone here keeps telling you that in general SATA is already worth it because of newer drives. SATA "the interface itself" doesnt offer any real performance gain b/c hard-drives dont utilize it. But its the "new" mainstream interface manufacturers have adopted to create new and improved hard-drives. Manufacturers are slowing phasing out PATA (IDE) drives and arent improving them any further. Even though SATA itself doesnt offer much, the hard-drives being produced "for it" have new technology such as NCQ which improve performance.

And also like the guy above said, SATAII is a marketing name. The seagate 7200.8 hard-drives that are labelled SATA (I) have the same features as other company SATAII drives, specifically NCQ and only lack the 3GB interface which is useless b/c hard-drives dont come close to putting out that much bandwidth.


So in conclusion, forget the name SATA(I) or (II) and look at what features and benchmarks different hard-drives have. You are on the Anandtech forums so why dont you browse over to the Anandtech reviews and read up on that.

O and just so you know, Seagate SATA(I) drives (7200.8) beat Hitachi SATAII drives in quite a few benchmarks for real world performance.

 

[archcommus]

I understand that SATAI and II are just interfaces and different extensions, but because SATAI offers NCQ among other things, I wasn't really seeing why SATAII is helpful now. And apparently it isn't, at least not too much.

I guess my real question was, when will drives start utilizing full SATAI and II speeds?

 

[DerelictDev]

Not anytime soon, utilizing full SATAI will probably be possible in a few yrs, SATAII maybe unlikely. Not until solid-state/ flash based hard-drives take over will there be a possibility of requiring that much bandwidth.

10,000rpm raptor only utilizes maybe 80 avg read/write and maybe 130 burst speeds. 15,000rpm will take some time to come out and will probably be like 130 avg and 180 burst?? If your really looking into performance you go RAID or SCSI.

 

[archcommus]

I've read that the performance gains of going RAID with SATA isn't as large as with IDE. Is this true? If not, what type of RAID setup would you recommend with SATA drives? I've never done anything with RAID before.

 

[anarchyreigns]

Originally posted by: archcommus
I understand that SATAI and II are just interfaces and different extensions, but because SATAI offers NCQ among other things, I wasn't really seeing why SATAII is helpful now.

Hoooboy. Okay. Any SATA drive can offer NCQ...it doesn't matter whether it is SATA 1.5G or 3G, it can offer Native Command Queuing.

Why? Because NCQ is a SATA II extension, and as I said before, any SATA drive can add SATA II extensions.

Read this as if it was printed in big red, bold, flashing print...SATA II...is not a speed spec.

The speed spec is defined by SATA...not by SATA II, which are seperately, a set of capabilities (read: aside from interface speeds) that you can add to a SATA hard drive.