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Serial-ATA

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by Christer, 2003/11/28.

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  1. 2003/11/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Hi all!

    HardDiskDrives have been developed from Parallel-ATA to Serial-ATA and quite a few drives can be purchased with either interface.

    Does every system benefit from a Serial-ATA drive or would it on an older system, like mine - see below, be a waste of money?

    Are Serial-ATA drives recognized by the BIOS in the same way as a Parallel-ATA or would I have to "install it "?

    Thanks for Your time,
    Christer
     
    Last edited: 2003/11/28
    Christer,
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  2. 2003/11/28
    Zander

    Zander Geek Member Alumni

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    Christer
    I can't really answer your questions as I haven't had any experience with it yet but until somebody else comes along you can have a look at this article.
    The advantages of serial ATA over parallel ATA
    To your bios question, I suspect the answer is yes. My motherboard supports serial ata but at the time I built this puter there wasn't many drives available for it yet so I stuck with parallel ATA. Anyway, until I disabled sata in the bios I would get an error message about a drive not being found (or some such thing) , once disabled, the error message was gone so it was obviously taking a look at it. If memory serves me correctly, before I disabled it there was an option to boot sata also. That's all I can tell you for now. Somebody else will jump in I'm sure.
     
    Zander,
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  4. 2003/11/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Hi Zander!

    That link will occupy my time during the weekend ...... :eek: ...... there are links to other pages in there and I´m sure they will trigger more questions.

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  5. 2003/11/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Adding information regarding my question:

    I plan on getting a second HDD (80 or 120 GB).
    This will become the Primary Master.

    The DVD will become the Primary Slave.

    The CD-R/RW will become the Secondary Master.

    The old HDD (40 GB) will become the Secondary Slave.

    Will I, with this setup, benefit from a SATA-drive as the Primary Master. The old HDD is, of course, a PATA-drive.

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  6. 2003/11/28
    Zander

    Zander Geek Member Alumni

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    It's my understanding that with SATA there is not need for a master or slave setting. Each device has it's own dedicated link to the bus. In contrast to this, PATA devices share the same link (cable) thus the need for a master and a slave. So if you used a SATA drive, you'd be able to keep the rest of them set up the way they currently are. Don't take this as gospel. It's just the way I understand it from what I've read. How about you hardware gurus out there? Am I reading this correctly?
     
    Zander,
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  7. 2003/11/28
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Christer

    The links I can find relating to EPOX 8KTA3 suggest that the mobo does not support SATA - it was produced prior to the introduction of SATA. Maybe you have a later version with SATA support - my guess - if your board is more than a year from launch it is unlikely to support SATA.
     
    PeteC,
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  8. 2003/11/28
    Zander

    Zander Geek Member Alumni

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    I would agree with that. You could however go the PCI card route.
     
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  9. 2003/11/29
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Hi Guys!

    I have come to the same conclusion as You have, my motherboard is too old and doesn´t support SATA.

    I also believe that mixing PATAs and SATAs is not very clever, if at all possible.

    Regards,
    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  10. 2003/12/01
    Calculus

    Calculus Inactive

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    I suggest you not connect an optical drive to the same IDE bus as one of your hard drives as the bus will only run as fast as the slowest drive on the Bus. So if you have an Ultra 100 hard disk drive and a Ultra 66 DVD rom drive on the same bus, it will only run as fast as the 66 speed. Bit of a waste of a fast disk.


    Also, SATA uses a completley different interface that the old P-ATA disk drives so you wouldn't have them set up as primary master, slaves and secondary devices etc. The devices would take priority over each other depending on the boot sequence configured in your bios. i.e Boot the SATA devices first or the PATA disks
     
    Calculus,
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  11. 2003/12/01
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Hi Calculus!

    I´ll have to check that but I think that they are ATA100. The reason for putting the two HDDs on separate controllers is to be able to read from one and write to the other simultaneously.

    Thanks,
    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  12. 2003/12/01
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    I had a look in My computer > Properties > Hardware > Device manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI > Controller and for both optical devices it says "DMA if available" and "Multi-Word DMA Mode 2 ".

    That doesn´t sound like ATA 100 ...... :( ...... am I totally off track here?
    Mode 2 is ancient ...... ATA 16.67 or something on 2½ years old devices?

    If it is correct, then it means that I have to keep the optical devices on the secondary controller and the HDDs on the primary controller.

    Well, the simultaneous read/write issue is not that important. Backups to the slave HDD and creating Ghost Images can take a while longer ...... :cool: ......

    Christer
     
    Last edited: 2003/12/01
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  13. 2003/12/02
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff Thread Starter

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    Hi again!

    I´ve done some "research" and found out that I was totally wrong on my ATA100 assumption.

    All references I could find about IDE interface speed for optical devices is either Multi-Word DMA mode 2 = 16.7 kB/s or UDMA mode 2 = 33.3 kB/s.

    This seems to be slow but it´s actually hundreds of times faster than the maximum read capacity.

    However, it confirms that mixing an optical device and a HDD on the same controller would be a serious mistake ...... :eek: ......

    Having only two channels on my motherboard, this will be my setup:

    Main Drive = Primary Master
    Backup Drive = Primary Slave
    CD-R/RW = Secondary Master
    DVD-ROM = Secondary Slave

    Calculus,
    thanks for pointing me the right direction!

    Christer
     
    Christer,
    #12
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