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Replacing IDE Drive with SATA?

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by Gemo, 2007/12/29.

  1. 2007/12/29
    Gemo

    Gemo Inactive Thread Starter

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    About 2 yrs ago I built my PC (ASUS m/b, 2GB RAM, WinXP...) using a 250 GB IDE drive as the C: (and only) drive.

    Now I want to expand the hard drive memory and am wondering if there is any real advantage of buying a SATA drive and using it as my C: drive - ie. cloning the existing IDE drive over to the new SATA and then using the old IDE as my d: drive ?

    For example - would WinXP start up, run faster, etc, etc ?

    - or should I just use a SATA (or another IDE) as my D: drive ?
     
    Gemo,
    #1
  2. 2007/12/29
    Steve R Jones

    Steve R Jones SuperGeek Staff

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    Does your mobo have SATA ports?

    A SATA drive with 16meg cache might maybe make some things you do run a little faster if your current drive doesn't have a 16 meg cache..Going SATA would help in the "future proof" department. Many new mobo's only have one or No IDE ports.
     
    Steve R Jones,
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  4. 2007/12/29
    Gemo

    Gemo Inactive Thread Starter

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    Yes my mobo does have both SATA and IDE drive ports.

    My IDE drive only has an 8MB cache, so appreciate your comment on the 16MB advantage (which I guess I'd also realize on an IDE)...

    Therefore it looks like there's no significant difference performance-wise between a SATA and an IDE...

    Interesting/valid comment about future proofing...

    Many thanks for your advice.
     
    Gemo,
    #3
  5. 2007/12/30
    TonyT

    TonyT SuperGeek Staff

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    A SATA 2 drive will result in significant performance increases over the IDE drive, even if both are the same rpms and cache sizes. You'd notice faster defrags and faster partition imaging w/ Ghost or similar programs. Day to day applications will perform about the same though.
     
    TonyT,
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  6. 2007/12/30
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    To add to TonyT's post re SATA 2 - your mobo must support SATA 2, i.e. have SATA 2 controllers. SATA 2 drives are, AFAIK backwardly compatible with SATA 1 controllers, but will obviously only transfer at SATA 1 speeds. If not some have a jumper to limit to SATA 1.
     
    PeteC,
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  7. 2007/12/30
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    As far as I know, the Hitachi P7K500 is the fastest SATA-kid on the block. It has a maximum transfer rate of 1138 Mbps which is below SATA-150 specs, even below PATA-133 specs. As I understand it, you won't notice any difference if you hook it up to a SATA 150 or a SATA 300 port. (There are other differences between the two SATA standards, to complicated for me to understand but I believe in this until Rockster2U comes around and proves me wrong ... :p ... !)

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  8. 2008/01/03
    Chiles4

    Chiles4 Inactive

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    I always thought the "wisdom" was as follows...

    SATA II is no faster than SATA because no drive currently comes close to saturating the "old" SATA bus. And to continue in that vein, SATA isn't really instrinsically faster than IDE because of the same reason.

    I also thought that the SATA I/II interfaces don't really provide any speed benefit over IDE except that they have higher throughput "caps ".

    My "bottom-line" experience is as follows. You can upgrade from an IDE drive to a SATA drive and be disappointed with little to no speed increase. Often, you will see a noticeable speed increase simply because SATA drives are so much newer than IDE drives and incorporate newer technology like perpendicular recording resulting in higher areal density (density of bits).

    I've experienced both scenarios...upgrading from IDE to SATA with no speed increase at all and upgrading to yet another SATA drive with a significant speed increase. The latter occurred because I researched drives ad nauseum at www.storagereview.com and found a Samsung SpinPoint 320GB drive that "smoked ". But I'm sure there are many SATA drives that are poor performers as well.

    BTW, there is no performance gain for me by switching my SATA drive from SATA to SATA II or using the SATA II mainboard connectors.
     
    Chiles4,
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  9. 2008/01/03
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    Chiles4,

    Which model number?

    Thanks,
    Christer
     
    Christer,
    #8
  10. 2008/01/04
    Chiles4

    Chiles4 Inactive

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    Here is a link to the drive. Please note that I don't endorse that vendor and don't use it either.

    The drive reports an average read speed of 66MB/sec in HDTach which is quite good for a non-Raptor drive. It also was consistently near the top of most all of the drive benchmarks at www.storagereview.com. But that was three months ago and you know how things progress with this hobby!

    The new Seagate 1TB drive is supposedly the fastest non-Raptor drive out and reports somewhere in the low 90's (IIRC) for MB/sec. Quite zippy!!!
     
    Chiles4,
    #9
  11. 2008/01/04
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    I visited the Samsung site for the HD321KJ and was confused by the "Data Transfer Rate = 135 MB/sec" compared to the "Media Transfer Rate = 1138 Mb/sec" for the P7K500. I'm aware of the difference between MB/sec and Mb/sec but I still haven't figured out if Mb/sec should be devided by 8 or 10 to get MB/sec. Some people say 10 because there are check-bits transfered and others say that a byte is always 8 bits no matter what is transfered. If we go by the latter, the P7K500 is, like I said, the fastest SATA-kid on the block but if we go by the former, I was wrong. Confusing or what?

    Christer
     
    Christer,
    #10
  12. 2008/01/04
    Rockster2U

    Rockster2U Geek Member

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    Well put.

    I have yet to use a drive with a cache larger than 8MB so its tough for me to speak to some of the current options available. When Arie did his HDD survey a while back, I think I might have been one of, if not the only person that put Samsung at the top of their individual preferences.

    Personally, I don't notice much difference between SATA and PATA HDD's from a performance standpoint. I do prefer SATA drives however. I still use both. SATA's mostly inside and buttoned down and PATA's in removable bays.

    Now, as to speed - a quick note via a real world example. My best machines right now are socket 939's with FX57 processors - virtually identical everything except drives. Machine A has four 40 Gig Samsungs (SATA), two 75 Gig WD Raptors (SATA) and two 160 Gig Samsungs (PATA). Machine B has four 36 Gig Raptors (SATA), two 80 Gig Samsungs (SATA) and two 160 Gig Samsungs (PATA). I use a 40 Gig Samsung as the system drive in one and a 36 Gig Raptor as the system drive in the other. All other components are the same and both are running SLI. And the fastest machine is .......... yup, the one using a Samsung for the system drive. Go figure ..... On paper, its not supposed to be that way. Can I tell any difference between the two - no way.

    Moral of the story is - ____(you fill in the blank here)____

    Answer: Whatever blows your skirt up.

    ;)

    Why I like SATA
    View attachment 2197
     
    Last edited: 2008/01/04
    Rockster2U,
    #11

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