Help About SATA speeds

[lukebond008]

Hello, I currently have a motherboard with no SATA support so I may buy a SATA controller but I want to know do you get the same speeds out of a SATA controller than you do with a motherboard with SATA ports.

[J_Search]

lukebond008,

You can't. Your controller supported SATA will end up being slower than your IDE ATA.

J_

[lukebond008]

really ? The Card says Up to 150MB/s where as my IDE only goes up to 133MB/s

[chrisbliss18]

The PCI bus has a maximum data speed of 133MBps, which, on paper, is slightly slower than the max data speed of the IDE bus.

The SATA PCI expansion card probably specifies 150MBps since it is able to fully interface with 150MBps-capable drives and can handle data at that speed. It's possible that data transferred from one drive on the SATA card to another drive on the same card would transfer at 150MBps. Data that has to go through the PCI bus will be limited to capabilities of that bus.

Keep in mind that data transferred on the PCI bus will have to compete with other data on that bus. So, if you have a PCI sound card, PCI USB expansion card, and other PCI devices, your drives will have to compete for access to the bus with those other devices.

Another problem with running drives through a PCI

[lukebond008]

So am i better off getting a new motherbaord becuase i dont really wanna get another IDE drive becuase ill be buying Out-dated technology.

[chrisbliss18]

The speed differences between SATA and IDE, in my opinion, are negligible. While many people say that SATA gave them huge performance leaps, I just don't see how that is possible. The likelihood that you will see any major performance gains from a 12% increase in potential speed is next to none.

SATA still has some issues that IDE doesn't, and, until those problems are corrected, I will not be making the switch to SATA. The main issue that I have with SATA is that Windows still doesn't have built-in driver support for the different SATA buses. This means that you usually have to supply driver disks in order to install Windows to a SATA drive. I find it ironic that a person must use what is commonly thought of as a retired technology (floppy drives) in order to use the latest and greatest in drive technology. I don't have floppy drives on any of my systems, so I don't want to go through the hassle of installing one each time I want to install Windows to my system that has a SATA drive as its main drive.

It's true that SATA will most likely replace the IDE drives one day, but that day is very far off. If you check any online computer parts retailer, such as Newegg, you will see that most of the optical drives and harddrives are still running off of IDE channels. You will be very hard pressed to find any retailer selling more than a handful of drives that support SATA2 (yes, there is already a new SATA spec that already has products made for it).

I'd recommend that you just stay with IDE for the time being. While it's true that an IDE drive will one day become outdated, it is more likely that your drive will become rediculously and almost unusably small before its IDE connection will become obsolete.

[lukebond008]

Hmm really ? Well My current Drive is a 80GB Maxtor and its really playing upm I reguly hear tones coming from it and it clicks, ive ren chk disc and all that from DOS and it cant complete since its in such a state, It wont even format properly

[chrisbliss18]

A SATA drive is no different from an IDE drive except for the interface. So, if you are thinking that a SATA drive will avoid problems like your current IDE drive has, you are mistaken.

Personally, I don't like Maxtor (or Western Digital for that matter). I like Seagate drives. They are quieter, have been reliable for me, and have great warrenty (five year replacement warrenty) and RMA support in case any problems do happen.

If your drive has problems, get a new one. It doesn't have to be a SATA, an IDE will work just fine for you and prevent you from having as many installation problems.

Ohh... I forgot to mention something about how people see "huge performance gains" from running a SATA drive. Each time I reinstall my Windows, I see a huge performance gain because I got rid of all the crap on my system. Most likely, the people that claim huge performance gains are actually noticing how much better their system runs after a reinstall, not the actual speed increase from IDE to SATA.

[lukebond008]

i know they will both fucntion exacly the same but the next drive im going to be buying will be for long term and I want to use newer technology

[chrisbliss18]

It sounds like you are sold on SATA. I'm not trying to tell you not to get SATA; however, I am saying that SATA isn't going to give you huge benefits.

Here is a nice bulleted list for you:

• If you time your data access times, I'm sure that you will notice a marked improvement, but, without actually timing data response times, I doubt you will ever notice improvements that are directly tied to using SATA rather than IDE.
• SATA will most likely give you headaches when you try to install Windows to it.
• IDE will not be going away for a while yet (read: will be here for years to come).

That being said, the choice is your's. I just want you to be informed and to not fall for the overhype that people are spewing all over the place. Also, I don't think you should have to buy a new motherboard for no real reason.

[lukebond008]

I was planning on doing a Major upgrade to my PC anyway but I still do Like IDE I may still use it.

[Coconut Monkey]

SATA will most likely give you headaches when you try to install Windows to it.

That depends on the controller implementation. Many motherboards these days utilise chipsets (Nvidia nforce4, Intel since i865/i875 and possibly earlier) with native SATA - driver disks are no longer required (unless you use the "extra" SATA controller located on some boards).