SATA drives

[flywelder]

Hello, I need advice on if i should choose a SATA drive to replace my parallel IDE hard drive.

today is Friday 10-10-08. I am facing the reality that I need a larger hard drive than the 30 gig I am currently using, as updates to programs and virus protection ect, are eating up the hard drive space and I have left, only 12% free.

My questions are:

can I make a SATA drive be the C drive or not. ..............

and will I be able to then make the current C drive ( the 30 gig) become a second or slave drive.

For I would like to buy a new 500 Gig Western Digital SATA HDD. that is on mark down this week end, before the sale ends this weekend, and i would like to install it, to be my main drive ( drive C ), and just copy over the files from the 30 gig to this new drive.

Or is my only and best option for me, to order a 320 Gig IDE hard drive and forget modernizing to a SATA drive?

My mother board is a MSI, V class, model PM8M-V. It has two IDE ports and two SATA ports. Currently, I am using both IDE ports and none of the SATA ports. I am using Windows XP home edition.

note: that i am not a computer guru, just a home owner who turns the computer on, and serfs the web and attempting to update his desk top computer.

Can i do what i want without much hassle and technical. experience? How would i go about this ( what steps would i follow?)

Thanks all, I greatly appreciate your individual help, and I await your replies.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Hello, I need advice on if i should choose a SATA drive to replace my parallel IDE hard drive.

today is Friday 10-10-08. I am facing the reality that I need a larger hard drive than the 30 gig I am currently using, as updates to programs and virus protection ect, are eating up the hard drive space and I have left, only 12% free.

My questions are:

can I make a SATA drive be the C drive or not. ..............

and will I be able to then make the current C drive ( the 30 gig) become a second or slave drive.

For I would like to buy a new 500 Gig Western Digital SATA HDD. that is on mark down this week end, before the sale ends this weekend, and i would like to install it, to be my main drive ( drive C ), and just copy over the files from the 30 gig to this new drive.

Or is my only and best option for me, to order a 320 Gig IDE hard drive and forget modernizing to a SATA drive?

My mother board is a MSI, V class, model PM8M-V. It has two IDE ports and two SATA ports. Currently, I am using both IDE ports and none of the SATA ports. I am using Windows XP home edition.

note: that i am not a computer guru, just a home owner who turns the computer on, and serfs the web and attempting to update his desk top computer.

Can i do what i want without much hassle and technical. experience? How would i go about this ( what steps would i follow?)

Thanks all, I greatly appreciate your individual help, and I await your replies.

Having SATA and PATA easily co-exist (on computers equipped with both interfaces) is completely dependent on the BIOS authors and what they chose to give you access to. Sometimes the good options are not available in the BIOS menus on cheaper consumer class motherboards. The 'good options' offer easy re-arrangement of the bootstrap order specifically regarding SATA channels. I have seen good and bad BIOS on MSI mobos. Your motherboard has only two SATA ports (2 devices), and two PATA ports (4 devices). Usually this configuration gives generic choices. My guess is that it will be tricky, but do-able.

However, were you my customer I would recommend this: get either the SATA 500 or the PATA 320 (no surprise there!) let the decision be based on speed/performance/budget ... but ... forget about the drives co-existing, which removes any headaches from your decision making and actual upgrading. Instead of making the drives work togther, do this:

Install the new drive, Clone the old 30 GB main drive to the NEW drive (C: to C:). This means that the original WinXP configuration stays exactly the same on the NEW disk, the disk just gets bigger, faster and, younger. The old 30 GB gets removed and gets placed somewhere for safekeeping untouched. This buys you a sure-fire backup if the NEW drive happens to be defective and needs to be returned or in the event of some disaster like a virus outbreak or the computer is stolen. The older drive also happens to be, old. It is a detail worth pondering. Retire it, except for the odd emergency. What you really gain here is Piece of Mind' (sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

The details of the cloning operation can be explained later if you decide to go this route. It involves a CDROM from the manufacturer of either of the two drives you are using. In a nutshell, for the cloning operation both drives are hooked up simultaneously in the computer and the CDROM is booted and menus on there are followed to completion. If you can buy a 'RETAIL' drive (as opposed to 'OEM') when you actually purchase, it should come with a CDROM for this purpose. But even if your new drive is 'OEM' (aka White Box aka Barebones) the CDROM is free from online sources

Back at the beginning I said tricky, but do-able for them to co-exist, but this becomes a moot point when only one drive: PATA or SATA is detected. Referring to your self-description, in short, you cannot easily screw it up!

Edited October 11, 2008 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[Andromeda43]

If your system is already optimized for top performance then any IDE drive will be a huge bottleneck for you.

It's the slowest part of your system and your CPU is always sitting and waiting on the next bit of data from the drive.

Max data transfer for an IDE drive is 133 and SATA1 is 1500, while SATA2 is 3000.

If you only have two SATA ports on that mobo, they may well be only SATA1, but that's still a quantum leap above IDE.

I'd not EVER buy a WD drive, even on sale, but getting a SATA drive to replace that old (slow) IDE drive would be a great step up for you.

The MSI web site has this to say about that motherboard.

*******************************************

This micro ATX motherboard packs quite a punch considering its size (9.6" x 7.5") and price. This motherboard supports Celeron and Pentium 4 processors that use the Socket 478 interface. The VIA P4M800 and the VIA VT8237 are the Northbridge and Southbridge, respectively. Two onboard slots for 184-pin DDR 400 SDRAM can support up to 2GB system memory. The onboard expansion slots include 1 AGP 4x/8x and 3 PCI slots which provide you with enough options to connect your needed devices.

With the two SATA 1.5Gb/s connections, you can now store quite a considerable amount of data on your new SATA hard drives. The PM8M-V has a VIA UniChrome 2D/3D graphics core integrated onboard chipset that delivers enhanced video for gamers. The PM8M-V is also fitted with 6-channel Realtek ALC655, delivering high quality surround sound. The onboard Realtek 8201CL PHY LAN is handy for logging on to any network. All things considered, the motherboard is ideal for gaming and for multimedia.

*********************************************

As I've highlighted in RED, that's only a SATA1 mobo. Most of the first mobo's that came out with just two SATA ports were SATA1. That's a good step up from IDE, but only half as fast as SATA2. The newer mobo's like my MSI K9N-Platinum, have six SATA2 ports on the mobo and only one IDE port, supporting two IDE devices.

You not only have to get a HD that's compatible with that board, but then you have to clone the old IDE drive to the new SATA drive and reset the bios to boot from that drive and not the old IDE drive, which, by the way you can leave in the system as a storage drive once the new drive is running properly.

If your computer expertise is minimal, at best, I'd suggest you get a professional computer tech to do the upgrade for you.

For instance, if that new drive is a SATA2 drive, your mobo will not even see it, unless the drive is properly jumpered to only run at SATA1 speed.

In my old computer, with a SATA1 only mobo, I have an IDE drive connected to my #2 SATA port with an IDE to SATA adapter. It transfers data at nearly SATA1 speed. (I use it for my Storage Drive.)

I would have never believed it possible, to get such data transfer speeds from an IDE Drive, had I not seen it with my own two eyes. The OS drive on that PC is SATA2, but it's jumpered to run at the much lower SATA1 speed.

It's still a good old computer and runs both XP-Pro and Vista Ultimate.

Good luck to you,

B)

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Max data transfer for an IDE drive is 133 and SATA1 is 1500, while SATA2 is 3000.

If you only have two SATA ports on that mobo, they may well be only SATA1, but that's still a quantum leap above IDE.

Minor correction, 150 and 300 to be exact, the numbers you show refer to the Frequency of the SATA bus. Of course it usually matters not since the drives themselves (at least at the 7200 rpm consumer level) are often the same units with only the connector and interface changing. In practice they are all limited to where the data is read/write (outside of disk vs center), fragmentation and 3rd party influences (maybe Norton AntiVirus burning up your resources). I agree with your generally positive view of SATA advancements and prefer them myself as long as the BIOS gives me proper access to them, their bootstrap priority, enable/disable, etc. However, on too many budget motherboards, SATA and PATA are no better than each other except for the hook-ups, and are practically indistinguishable to the end-user. And too often, SATA/PATA may not play nice together on a given BIOS (to artfully steer this back to the thread originators question!).

Excerpted from WIKI: Serial_ATA

SATA 1.5 Gbit/s. First-generation SATA interfaces, also known as SATA/150 or unofficially as SATA 1, communicate at a rate of 1.5 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Taking into account 8b10b coding overhead, the actual uncoded transfer-rate is 1.2 Gbit/s, or 1,200 megabits per second (Mbit/s). The theoretical burst throughput of SATA/150 is similar to that of PATA/133, but newer SATA devices offer enhancements such as NCQ which improve performance in a multitasking environment. Sustained data transfer rates are limited by mechanical hard drives themselves, not the interfaces: the fastest modern desktop hard drives transfer data at a maximum of about 118 MB/s,[4] which is well within the capabilities of even the older PATA/133 specification.

SATA 3.0 Gbit/s. Soon after SATA/150's introduction a number of shortcomings were observed. At the application level SATA could only handle one pending transaction at a time like PATA. The SCSI interface has long been able to accept multiple outstanding requests and service them in the order which minimizes response time. This feature, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), was adopted as an optional supported feature for SATA 1.5 Gbit/s and SATA 3.0 Gbit/s devices. First-generation SATA devices were at best a little faster than parallel ATA/133 devices. Subsequently, a 3 Gbit/s signaling rate was added to the Physical layer (PHY layer), effectively doubling maximum data throughput from 150 MB/s to 300 MB/s. SATA/300's transfer rate is expected to satisfy drive throughput requirements for some time, as the fastest desktop hard disks barely saturate a SATA/150 link. A SATA data cable rated for 1.5 Gbit/s will handle current second-generation SATA 3.0 Gbit/s drives without any loss of sustained and burst data transfer performance.

I have yet to see a SATA drive that hits 150 MB/s in HdTach or anything else. IMHO what this all really means is that the available bandwidth on the SATA Interface is high but no drives exist to saturate it. It looks similar to the high-end SCSI interfaces. However, if some solid state technology HDD at a reasonable price comes along, those interfaces will really pay off.

I'd not EVER buy a WD drive, even on sale, but getting a SATA drive to replace that old (slow) IDE drive would be a great step up for you.

I tend to agree with you here. When you constantly chain up all kinds of combinations of drives Western Digital often causes conflicts. The IDE jumpers were always a pain to me when distinguishing between 'single' and 'master', the cable middle/end, and paired with non-WD drives. SATA seems to be OK so far, although I have only had a few of theirs to play with. If I had to make a purchase recommendation to the thread starter, I'd say go with a retail Seagate kit (to get the CDROM and cables). Their warranty is currently hard to beat as well.