Will hard drives be able to keep up with the Serial ATA standard??

[NFS4]

I hear that S-ATA will starts at 150MBps, but seeing as how hard drives today can barely touch the ATA-100 interface I wonder how much of that is just fluff??

But my biggest question is how will S-ATA compare with SCSI? What makes a 7200RPM SCSI drive so much faster than a 7200RPM IDE drive?? Could S-ATA bridge the gap?:Q

 

[NFS4]

NE1?

 

[chuckieland]

let just hope so
no way i'm spending money on scsi
when i get can IDE for lot cheaper
then noticeable difference is only in certain area
for everyday stuff, surfing internet, icq..etc i won't even see the difference

 

[Apex]

S-ATA is actually a pretty big unknown. SCSI goes to 160 right now with 320mbps drives starting to appear. In terms of max throughput, it's pretty unnecessary if we stay with a 32bit/33mhz pci standard. Going to a 66mhz and/or 64bit, we should see more of a gain.

I'm on 3 Seagate X15 drives in a RAID 0 right now. It pushes a sustained 100+mbps. Sustained. The peaks completely saturate the 32bit/33mhz pci bus. This is for the 1st gen 15,000rpm drives. The Seagate X15-36LP is noticably faster too.

The only thing that makes 7200rpm SCSI drives faster than 7200rpm IDE drives is the access time. If access times for S-ATA are along the lines of SCSI with the price of IDE, we're talking the death of the ATA interface. If we're talking SCSI prices, there may be little reason to move over unless we have IDE densities and SCSI access times.

 

[CQuinn]

Where's Thorin?

Anyway, it's not fluff, but its also not that meaningful for today's drives. Since most drives can't even
push ATA-66.



<< What makes a 7200RPM SCSI drive so much faster than a 7200RPM IDE drive?? >>



Faster? Not necessarily... SCSI would give a drive some advantages with chaining devices, and
with command queing and multitasking that can make the SCSI drive seem more responsive than
current IDE drives. Current 7200rpm IDE drives should benchmark in the same range as current
7200rpm SCSI drives. But the baseline for SCSI drives has moved up to 10000rpm in the past year or two;
and now there is only one major manufacturer left that even still builds 7200rpm SCSI drives.

The fastest 7200rpm drives out right now can't touch the lesser performing 10000rpm SCSI drives.

Serial ATA does perhaps open the possibility that HD makers will have to upgrade ATA drives to
higher rotational speeds in the future, but the odds are that speed increase will come with
a price increase that will bring those drives more in line with current SCSI premiums.

 

[Soccerman]

What makes a 7200RPM SCSI drive so much faster than a 7200RPM IDE drive??

the manufacturers actually strive to reduce access times in SCSI 7200RPM drives, that's the difference.

how will S-ATA help out even though drives today can't touch that limit? when using multiple drives at the same time, the maximum throughput of the S-ATA controller (which is 150 megs/second I think) will potentially be easier to hit, becuase drives aren't just taking turns accessing a channel, they send and recieve at will (until the controller hits it's throughput limit).

Serial ATA helps out for the people who use 2+ IDE drives in their computer, without buying an extra controller. For example today, if you have 2 HD's, and 2 optical drives, the best IDE configuration would be to use the onboard IDE controller and a second controller, so that each drive has it's own channel (less sharing is good).

ok, so you might not need as many controllers. what else? well again you have the thin cables, if cooling your case is any concern, that's a plus.

those are the only REAL advantages that Serial ATA has over todays ATA standards.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Serial ATA does perhaps open the possibility that HD makers will have to upgrade ATA drives to
higher rotational speeds in the future, but the odds are that speed increase will come with
a price increase that will bring those drives more in line with current SCSI premiums. >>

That sounds right. IDE prices must rise to level of SCSI solutions. SCSI drives/interfaces won't drop in price because of the lucrative profits selling to businesses. IDE drives can never match or eclipse SCSI drives due to economics if not technical reasons.

 

[DoctorBooze]

7200rpm SCSI drives have lower access times than 7200rpm ATA drives because the SCSI drives tend to be much smaller capacity, using a lower areal (particularly track) density, which is easier for the drive to seek to. Because less precision is required, they can fit faster stepper motors too. Their sustained transfer rate is usually lower than IDE drives (also because the areal density is lower), but that doesn't matter, because SCSI having command queueing etc. and all sorts of other nifty things means when your system gets busy, SCSI just takes it.

Of course with SCSI drives spinning faster, their transfer rates are right back up past current ATA drives, and they still have lower track density and can seek faster.

So no, S-ATA won't make any difference. ATA and SCSI are for different markets.