How much faster are serial hard drives going to be?

[cyberock]

I'm just curious on how much faster the ATA Serial hard drives are going to be over IDE hard drive that are starting to come out. The reason I'm asking is because I bought a new Asus P4PE motherboard last month for a machine I'm going to build myself. The only thing is, I bought the cheap one, the P4PE/L. I'm thinking about dumping it on ebay and buying the one with firewire, gig lan, and serial ATA. Just trying to determine if it's worth it.

 

[mechBgon]

Doesn't look like it's got much to offer in the pure speed department. Read this review by StorageReview.com, comparing a traditional ATA100 Seagate Barracuda ATA V (2Mb cache) to the SATA version with 8Mb cache. Despite having 4 times as much cache and theoretically a faster interface, the SATA drive turns in mixed results against its ATA100 brother: StorageReview.com And neither of them can match a WD 200Mb SE.

One thing that bugs me about SATA is that you can only have one drive per cable. SATA II supposedly will allow them to be daisy-chained, from what I read here

If you want high performance, long lifespan, virtually unrestricted cable length and up to 14 drives per cable, there's always SCSI. But its initial buy-in cost and smaller drive capacities are two big strikes against it for home-enthusiast users who want to (*cough*) download and store lots of data.

 

[thorin]

SerialATA is only a interface improvement not a drive improvement. The only instance where you will see a increase over today's drives on ParallelATA vs drives on SATA is when you transfer between two local drives (since they don't have to wait for each other...every drive is on it's own channel so no channel sharing like PATA). Obviously drives will get faster and faster as they always have but the switch to SATA has little to no bearing on that increase.

Thorin

 

[cyberock]

Thanks guys! I think I'm going to stick with my Asus P4PE/L motherboard then. Doesn't sound like I need the serial ATA support. Gig lan is probably another thing that is a waste for me on that motherboard since I'm only using the network for my cable modem. The only other thing that would of been nice would of been the firewire on the board but my soundcard has it. Thanks again for the info!!!

 

[NOX]

My personal feeling is that people who are looking to get away from current (huge) IDE cables, will most likely make the jump sooner to SATA. That's the only reason why I would, mainly because like thorin explained that there is really little benefit in the speed department.

 

[thorin]

There are other benefits like better error checking, hot plugging, command queuing, no jumpers, lower power requirements, etc... that I'm looking forward too but they're all dependability/ease of use things not really speed things.

Thorin

 

[ALstonLoong]

Emm .. do you guys know do we able to use sata drive and a parellel drive individually( no raid ) on the raid connector in p4pe raid mobo ?

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: ALstonLoong
Emm .. do you guys know do we able to use sata drive and a parellel drive individually( no raid ) on the raid connector in p4pe raid mobo ?

I don't see why not, it would be like using SCSI and IDE/ATA on the same mobo.

 

[Shockwave]

Yeah, but projected SATA speeds are through the roof. The current is what? 150 meg / sec or something? I think they project up to 650 meg / sec in the next few years. I dont think ATA can touch that once they ramp up the drive speed to accomodate the SATA interfaces.

 

[NOX]

Eventually it will get to 1.5gb/s. Not sure when though, but it could be soon.

 

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by: NOX
Eventually it will get to 1.5gb/s. Not sure when though, but it could be soon.

Ah well, regardless of how far they take it...

SATA is the thing of the future, and I dont think ATA has a snowballs chance in hell of keeping up with serial. Course, seeing as how I'm a home user, I really dont feel too put out NOT having it. It isnt like I'm planning rocket trajectories over the Earth in real time or anything like calculating moon phases in regards to ocean patterns or anything.

My 800 Thunderbird with ATA/66 drives did me just fine.

But I still had to upgrade to the Asus A7N8X just cause

GET THE SATA!

 

[NOX]

It should go like this: 1.5gb/s in 2001, 2.4gb/s - 3.0gb/s in 2004, and 4.8gb/s - 6.0gb/s in 2007.

 

[charlie21]

Originally posted by: NOX
It should go like this: 1.5gb/s in 2001, 2.4gb/s - 3.0gb/s in 2004, and 4.8gb/s - 6.0gb/s in 2007.

Now if only the sustained transfer speeds of hard drives could catch up with this, then we'd be in business!

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: charlie21

Originally posted by: NOX
It should go like this: 1.5gb/s in 2001, 2.4gb/s - 3.0gb/s in 2004, and 4.8gb/s - 6.0gb/s in 2007.

Now if only the sustained transfer speeds of hard drives could catch up with this, then we'd be in business!

Yeah no sh1t. :Q

That's actually one of the reasons why I'm thinking of going SCSI.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: NOX
Eventually it will get to 1.5gb/s. Not sure when though, but it could be soon.

Close but no cigar.

Generation 1 of SATA (that's the one just coming out now) is 1.5Gbps (GigaBits per Second) or (since they use 10B encoding) 150MBps (MegaBytes per Second).

Generation 2 of SATA is slated for 3Gbps (300MBps)

Generation 3 of SATA is slated for 6Gbps (600MBps).

Originally posted by: NOX

Originally posted by: ALstonLoong
Emm .. do you guys know do we able to use sata drive and a parellel drive individually( no raid ) on the raid connector in p4pe raid mobo ?

I don't see why not, it would be like using SCSI and IDE/ATA on the same mobo.

Wouldn't it be more like mixing ATA33 and ATA66/100/133 on the same board? Either way I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Originally posted by: Shockwave...SATA is the thing of the future, and I dont think ATA has a snowballs chance in hell of keeping up with serial.

Uh Parallel ATA isn't/wasn't ever meant to 'keep up' with SATA, SATA has always been meant to completely replace PATA. So of course PATA doesn't have a chance in hell.

Originally posted by: NOX
That's actually one of the reasons why I'm thinking of going SCSI.

You should check out Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

Thorin

 

[arcenite]

If SATA drives reach a sustained rate of 600mb/s, I don't care how much it'll cost, I have to buy it!

Bill