LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 8:38 am Post subject: My own list of SATA questions

I've been curious about SATA drives for awhile, and while I'm not planning on getting one anytime soon (although my motherboard will support it, at least), I wanted to ask my questions about SATA anyways.

Now, I thought that SATA was (by definition) faster than IDE/EIDE, is that correct?

Also, I've been in computers for a number of years, and I know all about using multiple drives in a system (for example, with SCSI I can have up to 7 drives, SCSI-3 up to 15, as long as I set the jumpers for each to have their own ID, and for IDE there's typically two channels on the motherboard, each of which can support 2 drives - master and slave - bringing the typical maximum to 4 drives).

How does chaining drives work with SATA? More to the point: *CAN* you chain multiple drives with SATA?

I ask, because I noticed that my motherboard has only one SATA connection, and if there isn't a way to chain drives, what would happen if either I decided to add a 2nd hard drive, or added a SATA optical drive?

Leg Humper Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Posts: 5483

no they don't chain. Each drive has it's own cable\connection to the motherboard or controller card.

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:46 am Post subject:

quijbe wrote:
no they don't chain. Each drive has it's own cable\connection to the motherboard or controller card.

How is this supposed to be an improvement, then?

I mean, my existing motherboard has two connections for IDE drives (each of which will support two drives), and one connection for a SATA drive.

In other words:
IDE = max 4 drives
SATA = max 1 drive

Not only that, but there's been talk about using SATA for RAID. With only one SATA connection, how is this even possible (short of adding a SATA card to the machine)?

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:54 am Post subject:

if you only have one SATA connection on your MB you cannot raid.

But lots of MB have more. Mine has 4 SATA on it.

My understanding is SATA is Faster than IDE

I will look for a resource to support that

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:59 am Post subject:

here you go

http://www.computerhope.com/help/ide.htm#02

Quote:

IDE = 8.3MBps
SATA = 150MBps

Mutt Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 121 Location: USA

My motherboard has 8 SATA ports on it.

It also supoorts SATA and SATA 2.

SATA2 will run at 300Mbps so that is really fast and a major improvement. My board supports multiple types of SATA Raid which include RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5.

In the near future you will not have support on your motherboard for PATA at all. Everything will be SATA.

There are other benefits of SATA also. If you have more questions i will be happy to answer them.

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 12:30 pm Post subject:

seca111 wrote:
here you go

http://www.computerhope.com/help/ide.htm#02

Quote:

IDE = 8.3MBps
SATA = 150MBps

Theretically yeha. And besides, there are Ultra Ata disks that is 133 MBps.

But SATA is faster. I even notice it is, so it real - not just numbers.

I agree that SATA is not that much of an improvement when it comes to number of drives. But at least the cables are smaller... Rolling Eyes

/Akely

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 1:14 pm Post subject:

Akely wrote:
I agree that SATA is not that much of an improvement when it comes to number of drives. But at least the cables are smaller...
/Akely

Much smaller. Makes your case a whole lot cleaner! Plus you can also always install your own controller with more connections and raid capability. SATA is the SCSI killer, IMHO.

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:12 pm Post subject: Re: My own list of SATA questions

Alphi wrote:
Now, I thought that SATA was (by definition) faster than IDE/EIDE, is that correct?

Theoretically, SATA-150 or SATA2-300 are faster than ATA133. In practice, the performance of your hard-drive is so limited by the physical disk that the ATA133 interface is not at all a bottleneck, so SATA-300 provides almost no performance boost over ATA-300.

Quote:
*CAN* you chain multiple drives with SATA? I ask, because I noticed that my motherboard has only one SATA connection.

My motherboard has eight SATA connections and two PATA channels. It supports multiple levels of RAID across those drives.

It's easy to add a SATA controller to your PC. Just beware of possible PCI bus bottlenecks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102042

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 3:35 pm Post subject:

SATA in its current state couldn't possibly be a SCSI killer.

Like JAE said, the physical disk becomes the bottle neck, not its transfer speeds.

SCSI drives spinning at 15000rpm really cut down on the seek time bottle neck.

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:38 pm Post subject:

Doug wrote:
SATA in its current state couldn't possibly be a SCSI killer.

Like JAE said, the physical disk becomes the bottle neck, not its transfer speeds.

SCSI drives spinning at 15000rpm really cut down on the seek time bottle neck.

You have to look at more factors than just drive speed to determine that. For the most part it's a price/performance issue that makes it a SCSI killer. Most drive arrays (high capacity for things like video storage) have moved to SATA drives with Fibre Channel connections because of the enormous savings over SCSI for similar performance levels. That's why it's the SCSI killer.

But don't take my word for it.

Or here and here.

And I thought this article had an interesting quote:

Quote:
As expected, Ultra 320 dual channel SCSI mated with four 15,000 rpm drives is faster than quad channel Serial ATA and FireWire 800 RAID. But it will cost you three times as much and you'll end up with one-third the total capacity.

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject:

take my word for it.... SATA Rocks...

2 terra-bytes,
12 hdds all sata-150
dual mp2800's
2gb Memory
80gb ide main hdd
3ware 9500-12 raid card.

100mb/s a data xfer on a giga-bit connection, Idependant drive light operation<Try that with SCSI> I Sold them for 3k, made ~500 a pop on them with a dvd D/L burner. I sold 85 of these in a 6 month period.
This one is mine...

Mutt Joined: 21 Oct 2001 Posts: 78

I am planning on getting a new computer soon. I will get a new motherboard supporting SATA2 and RAID. I want to be able to install a WD1500 single boot drive and 2 secondary SATA2 drives in RAID 1 for storage. Then I want to have 2 DVD/RWs and 1 or 2 dvdROMs. My friend was telling me that even though my motherboard would support SATA2 and RAID, I would have much better performance in all areas if I bought a seperate SATA2 RAID card and hooked the HDDs up to that. He said it would be better because I will have 2 burners hooked up to my mobo and if I had hard drives hooked up as well, it would slow everything down. I don't want to spend any more money than I have to on this computer. So, is my friend right, should I invest in a seperate card for my hard drives, or is my mobo sufficient?
Thanks
Mike

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:29 pm Post subject:

If you buy a "cheap" PCI RAID card it'll be just as bad as using the onboard RAID controller. They'll both be using the PCI bus, unless you have PCIe slots and a PCIe RAID card. That would offer more bandwidth, but a simple 2 drive RAID 1 won't even exhaust the normal PCI bus.

Furthermore, I believe the onboard RAID controllers and the cheap PCI RAID cards have drivers that rely on the CPU to do the RAID operations. So you have overhead. Whereas a more expensive RAID card will free up your CPU from that task but you're at the mercy of the quality of the card.

Again, a simple 2 drive RAID 1 setup isn't that power intensive. If I were you I'd go ahead and use the onboard RAID but leave room to upgrade to a dedicated card later on. You won't see too much overhead unless you do fancier RAID arrays like RAID 5.

And since you're doing RAID 1 have a good data backup plan prepared.