Does anybody know what are the differences between a SATA and a IDE Hard Drive also known as IDE hard drives. I understand the physical differences (SATA with a serial cable) but what about performance? why is SATA so popular today?
SATA hard drives are superior to ATA drives for numerous reasons.
For one, they are easier to install and draw less power. They have several performance benefits as well. For example, ATA drives data transfer rate is capped at 133 MB/sec whereas SATA drives can kick in at over 300 MB/sec.
Another performance benefit found on SATA drives is their built-in hot-swap capabilities. SATA drives can be brought on and offline without shutting down the computer system, providing a serious benefit to those who can’t afford downtime, or who want to move drives in and out of operation quickly. The higher number of wires in the power connection is partially explained by this, as six of the fifteen wires are dedicated to allowing the hot-swap feature.
Comparing ATA drives to SATA drives can be tricky given all of the variables, but in general it is the case that SATA drives will still cost just a bit more than a comparable ATA drive. The gap is closing rapidly though, and as SATA drives gain in popularity and availability a distinct shift in prices can be expected. Considering the benefits of SATA over ATA, the potential difference of a few dollars can easily be justified when considering an upgrade.
The current SATA standard provides significant benefits over ATA in terms of convenience, power consumption and, most importantly, performance. The main thing ATA has going for it right now is history, as it has been the standard for so long that it will not likely disappear any time soon. The future of SATA will be even more interesting as speed increases will help hard drive development keep pace with other key system components.
I have a SATA drive and it absolutely outperforms other comps that I work on that have ATA.
Actually, with SATA-150 and IDE-100/133, there is little to no difference in performance or power consumption. The differences are more individual drive characteristics than interface parameters. However, as the SATA standard evolves, it is becoming significantly better in terms of performance. SATA-300, the most up-to-date version, represents a 25-30% improvement over both the earlier standards. Power consumption depends on drive motor, platters, etc, and is not significantly different when comparing drives of similar size and capacity.
We learned early in ADT's life that hard drives are cheaper than downtime. All of our servers have hardware RAID arrays with hot spares installed. We would have to have three drives fail in an array before the server would go offline.
3 - Ultra DMA/100 Hard Drive 8.9MS Seek Time, 7200 rpm 8MB Buffer, Retail Kit WD2500JBRTL 250 GB
119.99+9.9 Taxes = 129.89 - 50 MIB = 79.89
Please help me decide.
I have a 200 GB Seagate already on my computer and a 80 GB too but I want to get rid of the 80 and swap in either a 200 or 250 from the choices above. I have money for the Sata but I wouldn't get it if the improvements are minimal. So please advice me because my life depends on it :D
You haven't told us what you're going to use the drive for yet. If whatever it is doesn't tax the hard drive then there's no point spending the extra money for speed.
I don't do anything to excessive. Just a little bit of gaming, lots of downloading (mp3, movies, etc), a whole lot of web browsing, video/mp3/dvd movies playback every now and then, some office work, and that's about it basically.
You think think I should save get the IDE instead of the Sata and save that money on memory chips? coz I'm planning on upgrading my memory from pc2100 to pc3200.
If you're satisfied with the way the drive you have now performs and just want more capacity, then I don't see why you should spend extra for better performance.
Giving more thoughts about it I think I might even return them all tomorrow, considering how prices have dropped down in the past several weeks/months.
I just checked my computer and I have enough juice to survive a couple of months say 3-5 months maybe more. I still have 121.9 GB available out of the 268.26 GB. I could have more free space if I were not running GoBack and I think that's taking quite a bit of space.
So I would probably wait a couple of months and see how low the 300-400 GB Hard drives would be :)
Unless you're keeping a whole lot of backup versions in GoBack I don't expect it's taking up very much of your hard drive. It doesn't make a copy of everything you have when it makes a backup, it just flags what's changed. Most files never do.
Does your motherboard actually change the memory access timing if you change modules?
How fast is your processor? If it's not screaming fast then I seriously doubt you'll notice any difference in performance between the two memory types when taking into consideration how you use your computer. If you were authoring DVDs or processing video files it might be a different story.
I am planning on getting the a couple of XS corsair 1 GB (512 x 2) dual channel for my A7N8X motherboard. I'm running Athlon XP 2500+ and 768 MB of Pc2100 RAM. I always use a lot of programs at once and that's the main reason I wanna get more and faster memory and thus increased stability. My motherboard supports up to 400 MHz FSB.
