SATA Confusion, Info- research links needed.

Wow what a pain. Built a new system using the G/B GA k8N Pro SLI mb. Its uses Nvidia's SATA 3g (is that SATA II or supposed to be?.) I've been going round and round with them first to find out if my Raptor 36g would work. Supposedly it will. So I installed the board. Turns out the drive was also bad... from a cooked CPU I think, one of many fried items on that machine).

I then, and am still in the process of trying to find out if their nForce4 SATA 3g Controller will work with a Raptor 74 SATA 150. because I need to replace the old raptor... but would like to go bigger... and sone the Raptor 150 is out (Still a SATA 150) thought I'd look at the 74g.

I've seem more notations on SATA than carters has pills... and evidently the newer specs do not maintain a backward compatability.... but some do??? AGHHH!

I've seen SATA, SATA I, SATA 150, SATA II-150, SATA II, SATA 3, SATA 300 and SATA 3G!!!! for pete sake. Oh, and don't forget that each has four channels that sometines are added!

Any idea on where I can get info on what works with what and whos are backward compatable etc. I also suspect there are some duplicate notations for the same thing. I guess SATA II 150 is just a smaller burst rated SATA 3?

Has anyone (like Tom's Hardware or other sites like his) done any info articles. I hate being in the dark like a mushroom. Seems like I have to repeat myself three times to any on the support email pages for the mfgrs ..

Also has anyone use a WD Raptor 74 Sata 150 on Nvidia's nForce4 SATA 3g controller? Any luck?

Right now I picked up a little IDE 80g to get it up and running, But still want to get top of the line (short of SCSI) SATA drive performance and longevity...

So far the Raptors are still King of the Hill for lower cost performance. I'm not in need of mega storage... but did get spoiled with SCSIs one time... just cant afford them anymore.

Any info will help. Thanks... Dave

 

Hi dem45133,

Don't worry - we are all confused as you are regarding this SATA thing.

Many manufacturers do not stick to specifications (including naming their products) and create a nice mess.

Right now there are only 2 SATA standards - SATA I and SATA II. SATA II is supposed to be backwards compatible with SATA I - if a drive supports SATA II but is connected to SATA I controller it would perform at SATA I. (Please note the word 'supposed'.) But in practice things are different - most of the SATA II hard disks ship with SATA II disabled - you have to download the manufacturers utility to coax the drive into SATA II mode otherwise they work in SATA I mode.

If you want further info have a look at this site http://www.serialata.org/. This would provide you all the theory (and some practical advice) that you require.

 

My estimate of those terms:
SATA = SATA I.
150 stands for the ATA rating. PATA only went to 133, SATA is now at 150.
3G stands for 3 Gigabits per second transfer rate.

Maybe the best place to ask about compatibility would be the Nvidia's motherboard forum:
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?f34.html
(try a search for your Raptor model)
Lots of questions about IDE.

BIG discussion on data loss (9 pages) involving all types of drives:
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t8171-0.html

Matt