Jump to content

Serial Hard Disks...... SATA


Paul
 Share

Recommended Posts

OK. seeing as my HD is due a iminent failure, and only by pure luck, and a smack from a screwdriver, thats its working now... its time to consider a new HD.

When i built PC i allowed for a motherboard, which supports... SATA drives.

Aynone seen any around for sale yet?

Preferably the Seagate Baracuda V or the Maxtor Diamond Plus 9?

Although this HD is under warrenty, when it does go, i'll sell the brand new relacement on, untouched and sealed......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've seen a few online. I considered buying SATA when I built a new pc a few weeks ago, but decided against it since I had 180GB of perfectly good drives already... tongue.gif

Not too many places stock them though. I just checked Komplett.co.uk and they only have 1 model in stock at the moment. They had 4 last week, so I reckon they will have more any day. Anyway, they list the Seagate Barracuda 120GB for about £130 so that's pretty good. The question is whether they can actually supply it since it's listed as unconfirmed delivery. Dabs.com has got a few listed, but with 'Long lead time expected'. confused.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SATA is not really worth it in my opinion unless you have a number of drives on the same channel - I.e. to avoid channel saturation. The actual performance is not better then ata100/133 if you have 1/2 drives.

Ultra320 SCSI is similar - I.e. for 1/2 drives you only get mildly better performance than ATA133 believe it or not. Put lots of drives on it though and it rips - no contention you see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...and there lies a point of contention laugh.gif

Depends on the implementation doesn't it? Some are saying single drive per channel *but* the interface itself accepts multiple channels.

Also, the drives maybe the issue in terms of taking advantage of the interface but thats the same with Scsi isn't it?

Dunno strikes me as a pointless interface at this point in time unless of course the pricing makes it attractive. From a technical standpoint I can't see the point smashfreakB.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are a couple of plus points over the current IDE setups from what I can see:

No jumper settings required on the disk packs

Smaller simpler cables which are easy to install into cases and is obvious which way round they go

Hot swap when supported

Longer cable length

Support for external devices

All in all nothing that scsi can't do lets just hope its cheaper!

Chris.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is the controller logic being moved to the interface then rather then the drives? That may bring down the cost of the drives but wont that make the interface expensive smashfreakB.gif

The best thing about IDE is its simple and v. cheap - it ain't SCSI but then again how many home users know enough about it (or need the performance anyway).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nope I think the electronics split is still the same, as you can buy adaptors to plug PATA devices into SATA controllers, and all the do is demultiplex the signals from the serial input back to the 40pin of the older devices.

Still at least the new system is simpler, any fool you plug it together, before you had to know what the red line on the ide cable meant.

Chris.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks for replies...

I am considering the Komplette- Seagate baracuda, but its unconfirmed 3/3/03 !!! so not sure mine will last that long..

My board will support ATA 100, 133 and SATA.

ok i might not need SATA, but it does tidy things up if nothing else...

looks like they are still not out yet then......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...