Serial ATA

WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
edited June 2003 in Hardware
whats so good about serial ATA?

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    It's a teeny tiny bit faster than PATA, the cables are way thinner and can be a lot longer. That about covers it.
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited June 2003
    Plus since its a new technology, its a bit buggy
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    danball1976 said
    Plus since its a new technology, its a bit buggy

    Okay, actually Dan, that's pretty much not true at all.. The tech itself works great. It's mostly software problems with early revision SATA RAID bioses that were having some issues -- only with "Serillel" adapters - the adapters that convert standard ATA drives to serial ATA. So, in reality, the problems had nothing to do with SATA, they had to do with adapting PATA drives to SATA adapters. Recent software patches in the form of BIOS updates have corrected the problems.
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited June 2003
    Oh, ok. Thanks for clearing that up
  • jonojono Manchester, UK
    edited June 2003
    I have 2 Maxtor 80gig sata drives running in a raid config, a couple of things about them:

    faster data transfer at 150 MBPS for this 1st generation, although that will be more down to the 10,000 rpm drives.

    The cable lengths can be longer good if you use big tall cases like me, cables up to 1meter in length.

    The drives are hot swappable, you can unplug the drive and plug it back in while the pc is still on.

    And as prime said the cables are thinner, so i'm sure that will incease better system cooling, although the drives themselves run quite hot.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited June 2003
    Here's a link to a thread which also contains a discussion about SATA.

    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited June 2003
    jono said


    The drives are hot swappable, you can unplug the drive and plug it back in while the pc is still on.



    Are there (or will there be) drive caddies available for SATA drives?

    This would be wonderful.


    Prof
  • jonojono Manchester, UK
    edited June 2003
    profdlp said
    jono said


    The drives are hot swappable, you can unplug the drive and plug it back in while the pc is still on.



    Are there (or will there be) drive caddies available for SATA drives?

    This would be wonderful.


    Prof

    Check out the icy dock ones, never really checked, but i'm sure they must be some out there as these would be good for mobile users.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited June 2003
    jono said

    Check out the icy dock ones, never really checked, but i'm sure they must be some out there as these would be good for mobile users. [/B]

    Those look pretty cool. I think my case would look nice with a couple of those LCD's sprucing up the front.:cool:


    Prof
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    Even if it seems that SATA drives is a tiny bit faster, the fact is they ARE faster.
    2 of the fastest IDE drives in Raid 0 isn´t near what 2 Raptors are in speed.

    However, the cost of one Raptor doesn´t justify a buy yet unfortunatly. They have to get up to around 100 gigs for the price it is on right now and i believe that will happen soon. This year even.

    SATA has had some "viruses" in the beginning, but that is because of some incompetent chipsetmakers gave their chips to motherboard manufacturers to quickly, long before the first serious drives where on the market.

    One thing the motherboard manufacturers HAVE to change is the connectors on the motherboard, they are far to easy to break if you fumble inside your case in the dark. The effective height of the connector and the cable together is about an inch which obviosly is quite dangerous.

    One thing though ,SATA´s improvement will mean VERY cheap massive storage drives in the "old" ATA as the manufacturers will do everything they can to get rid of what they have before the total change and before SATA becomes standard.

    My next drives will be SATA, most definatly.
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