IDE vs SATA

[jcarle]

ya and im just pointing that out. when ppl think that sataII is faster than sataI, its not true. b/c the raptor is sataI.

Again, there is no such thing as SATA II or SATA I. You just don't get it, do you.

[newsposter]

As of now, the **only** thing you get from SATA vs IDE/PATA is narrower cables inside of your PC. If you have more than one drive, you'll actually have MORE SATA cables than PATA which may well negate any cooling advantage of the smaller SATA cables.

In addition to the raw speed calculations, PATA just happens to be MORE reliable than SATA. Why? Because IDE/PATA implements error correction in the hardware/chipset independantly of the CPU and OS. Remember that the whole rationale for SATA is that it's supposed to be cheaper than PATA. As such, one of the 'cheaper' things is that error correction occurs in the device driver, OS, and CPU.

SATA running at 3 Gbit/sec is nominally no faster than PATA running at 133 MBYTE/sec. Do the maths. And then look up the 'cheaper' side of SATA and compare it to what PATA does in hardware.

No contest.

[jcarle]

As of now, the **only** thing you get from SATA vs IDE/PATA is narrower cables inside of your PC. If you have more than one drive, you'll actually have MORE SATA cables than PATA which may well negate any cooling advantage of the smaller SATA cables.

In addition to the raw speed calculations, PATA just happens to be MORE reliable than SATA. Why? Because IDE/PATA implements error correction in the hardware/chipset independantly of the CPU and OS. Remember that the whole rationale for SATA is that it's supposed to be cheaper than PATA. As such, one of the 'cheaper' things is that error correction occurs in the device driver, OS, and CPU.

SATA running at 3 Gbit/sec is nominally no faster than PATA running at 133 MBYTE/sec. Do the maths. And then look up the 'cheaper' side of SATA and compare it to what PATA does in hardware.

No contest.

You have no real understanding of anything you just wrote.

[XL-DJK]

well guys, I know that my ST3250620AS have 1.5 or 3.0....I've removed the jumper for 3.0 speed....noticed the transfer rate is much better however I highly doubt I'm able to transfer 3GB/sec

[jcarle]

well guys, I know that my ST3250620AS have 1.5 or 3.0....I've removed the jumper for 3.0 speed....noticed the transfer rate is much better however I highly doubt I'm able to transfer 3GB/sec

It's to be expected. 3Gb/s is the interface transfer limit. The actual transfer rate is entirely limited to your hard drive's capability, which in your case is 300Mb/s.

Edited April 16, 2007 by jcarle

[XL-DJK]

that good? LOL...i've no idea. I've just recently hooked up Sata and have no clue ....

if memory serves me correctly, I remember that my IDE Drive Maxtor 160GB had a transfer rate I believe was 92MB/s at best

Edited April 16, 2007 by XL-DJK95355

[newsposter]

So address the disputed points instead of pretending to be all guru-ish......

I daresay that I've probably implemented far more petabytes of storage than you using a far wider variety of technologies.

[jcarle]

So address the disputed points instead of pretending to be all guru-ish......

I daresay that I've probably implemented far more petabytes of storage than you using a far wider variety of technologies.

Disputed points? You didn't even make any valid points. As for your storage implementations, I doubt that. None the less, I'm going to illustrate the vast differences below.

To start, the ATA standard is out-dated. The standard was established in 1986 and was simply revised over and over again to try to keep up to date. The last revision was in 2001 which is 6 years ago. The SATA standard was established in 2003. It's fairly obvious that a standard created within the last 4 years is going to be much more capable and much more adaptable to modern needs then one made over 20 years ago.

The ATA standard has not been revised since 2001 because it is impossible, at this time, using that standard, to exceed the limitations of 133MB/s. The limitations are due to signal timings, electromagnetic interference and data integrity. Something that simply cannot be fixed with a revision of the standard. As modern data throughput increases, ATA simply cannot keep up without creating bottlenecks.

ATA being parallel in nature is also limited to 16-bit. SATA does not have this limitation as it uses 1-bit data signaling.

There is the obvious advantages of smaller cables being used for SATA. Although an single IDE cable can be used to connect two IDE devices, two SATA cables are still smaller then a single IDE cable.

There is also a difference in the supported length for each standard's cables. ATA can sustain IDE cables up to 18 inches. SATA can sustain up to 40 inch cables.

Data transmission power consumption is also reduced. ATA uses sixteen 5V data signals, SATA uses a single 250mV data signal.

ATA is not hot-swappable without special hardware. SATA is hot-swappable.

ATA cannot exceed 133MB/s burst transfer rates. SATA can sustain up to 300MB/s continuous transfer rates.

SATA supports better power management as SATA devices can use 3.3V as well as the typical 12V and 5V found in ATA devices.

SATA natively supports AHCI which ATA cannot support.

SATA supports NCQ, ATA does not.

And by the way, your only argument for ATA, the one about error correction is false. SATA uses CRC error correction to verify data packets, the same method that ATA uses. SATA takes a step up above ATA though since not only does it verify data packets like ATA does, it also uses CRC data verification on command and status packets, which ATA does not do.

There is simply no reason not to choose SATA over ATA, unless the person is, like yourself, completely misinformed.

Edited April 16, 2007 by jcarle

[Guest ytrewq]

jcarle is totally right here, but there's more to it:

-Pricing: if you look at new HDs at several stores, you'll see the PATA versions are often more expensive than the faster SATA one (like this vs this). Even if the difference isn't huge (still 40$ more for the PATA version of the Seagate 750GB vs the SATA), why pay more for older, lesser, slower parts?

-Availability: just look at the manufacturers' lineups for each interface. They're starting to have less PATA models and more SATA ones unsurprisingly. This is only going to get worse. Soon enough, your choices for buying PATA drives will be pretty minimal. Even DVD burners are making the switch now.

-New chipsets, and motherboards that use 'em: Not only new motherboards are starting to get a bunch more SATA ports and often only one PATA connector, but lots of new chipsets like Intel's 965 don't even have a PATA/IDE port built-in anymore! So they have to rely on other 3rd party chips to add one if they want to have one. Performance isn't always great, and dependign on which controller they pick the drivers sometimes suck. Case in point: some of them are using PATA-to-USB bridges for that like the JMicron JMB20335 (you can't even install your OS on the PATA ports or boot from them in this case e.g. the MSI G965M-FI). Soon enough we'll see motherboards without any PATA connectors at all.

-Reliability: SATA is good enough that lots of large companies (who need speed and reliability) are moving from expensive SCSI RAID setups to SATA RAID to save costs. The drives are almost as reliable as their SCSI counterparts but much cheaper. And the speeds are quit good too. There's some very nice SATA RAID cards out there (with staggered spin-up, hotswap, NCQ and all) like the Areca series. It's more reliable than IDE.

Buying SATA is future-proofing. You get better, faster stuff for cheaper, from a larger selection. Smaller cables... It's better all-around.

The ONLY reason to buy PATA drives is the need to support "legacy" systems.

[nmX.Memnoch]

I daresay that I've probably implemented far more petabytes of storage than you using a far wider variety of technologies.

I doubt it...

SCSI

SCSI RAID

SATA

SATA RAID

SAS RAID using SAS drives

SAS RAID using SATA drives

SAS RAID using both SAS and SATA drives on a single controller (yes, it can be done)

Fiber Channel using FC drives

My most recent being the Fiber Channel with thirty 146GB 15K RPM 4Gb/s fiber channel drives.

It's a no contest choice between PATA and SATA drives. SATA wins every time. To be honest, SATA drives are surprisingly fast on the right SAS RAID controller. You'll never get a PATA setup to be that fast.

Edited April 17, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch

[Stead]

holy crap, I feel like i'm in the 3'rd grade but with super geeks from hell...

...my take on all this

for the average user, there is no difference, except that sata is much easier to install as the plugs are nicer

if you are some power user who's with raid what not and all that, then sata gives greater bandwidth overall...however the sata drives and ide drives mechnically are very simular and I highly doubt someone using a computer could tell the difference between the too without running benchmarks proving one is better than the other...

In short, in my opinion the answer the original posters question could be something like

Well, in reality there isn't much of a difference, however, most things are sata nowadays, sata products (well harddrives) are generally cheaper, cd/dvd drives are avaliable, overall my self i'd always go for sata unless you specifically need ide, for example some motherboards have onboard raid but only for IDE in that case if you wanted raid get IDE drives, but since that doesn't apply here thats meaningless

P.s. i have not installed 100's of harddrives of any sort, however I have researched these things before when I was decideding weather or not to get sata in the past, but i'm capable of being able to suggest things for someone who wants to build a computer, not google's next data centre...

[jcarle]

There's a very simple thing you can try which will show you the difference between IDE and SATA and how SATA is yards better then IDE.

Put a hard drive as the primary master on an IDE cable then an 18x capable DVD+/-RW drive as the primary slave on the same cable. Now try to burn a full 4.7GB DVD-R at 18X from the hard drive. Chances are you'll end up with buffer underruns, maybe even a coaster.

Or try putting two IDE hard drives on the same IDE cable and copy a large multi-GB file between the two hard drives and see how long it takes.

Do the same with SATA hardware and you'll have none of those issues.

[Stead]

^^ I like that explanation! Nice n simple! but straight to the point

[XL-DJK]

I never put a CD/DVD Drive as a Slave on the same IDE Channel.

I have my HardDrives On IDE0

and my cd/dvd drives on IDE1

My Main Drive as Master and a Backup Drive as Slave

My CD Player as Primary Secondary and my CD/DVD Burner as Slave Secondary.

I learned from experience I can get faster response times by doing this as supposed to my Main Drive As Master Primary and my Burner as Slave Primary etc.

Quite honestly, IDE0 is redundant to me now as I've finally switched to Sata! (yay!)

[jcarle]

I never put a CD/DVD Drive as a Slave on the same IDE Channel.

I have my HardDrives On IDE0

and my cd/dvd drives on IDE1

My Main Drive as Master and a Backup Drive as Slave

My CD Player as Primary Secondary and my CD/DVD Burner as Slave Secondary.

I learned from experience I can get faster response times by doing this as supposed to my Main Drive As Master Primary and my Burner as Slave Primary etc.

Quite honestly, IDE0 is redundant to me now as I've finally switched to Sata! (yay!)

What you just explained goes on to support what I said. With SATA you simply don't have to take even the time to think about things like that.