To S-ATA or not to S-ATA

B0rG

I'm thinking of upgrading my HDDs - 2*80G is becoming very small.

I'm looking for recomendations on which HDDs to buy: stick with IDE, or move to S-ATA. I'm using only windows OSes: 98, 2000 Pro, Srv, Xp pro, Xp home and w2k3 server - this is development machine mostly.

Optikus

SATA are alot better i would recommend them if its a performance upgrade your after, if your just after the extra space then IDE is a bit cheaper.

B0rG

Hmm... there is always a choice between performance and reliability

Performance is not a big issue here, since my mobo is about a year old and does not support the latest SATA 150. I'd say I'd rather go for size and reliability. What I wanted was 2*200G Maxtors HDDs - the ones with 3 years warranty, I've got one of those (well 120G actually) in my internet machine and it's been up 24/7 since september last year. I'm wandering if SATA can give that kind of reasonably cheap reliability...

tribble

SATA is only the interface - the drives are the same as the IDE ones...
Preformance is the same too unless you have 2 10,000 RPM drives on one ATA100 cable.
No drives is singularly capable of saturating ATA100's, 100MB/sec max transfer rate (yet).

tribble

Oh and seagate hard drives (all of them) carry a five (5) year warrenty as of this summer (announced last week).

Optikus

tribble wrote:

Oh and seagate hard drives (all of them) carry a five (5) year warrenty as of this summer (announced last week).

PLEASE USE THE EDIT BUTTON... no need for a multiple post one minute apart.

B0rG

Is Seagate any good?

When I was into hardware (circa 97) they used to be known as boring and slow Quantum Fireballs were something if you want speed :-) Western Digital were slow but reliable. Nowadays I can't really tell. Had a horrible experience with IBM DeskStar 40G a couple of years ago - both went down in 11 months. Replaced them with DeskStart 80G and they've been running fine since 2002.

StRiKeR

yea use the edit!

SATA has got slightly better performance, cant say they are the same all round, and as well as that, SATA works different than IDE interface, theres master and slave on IDE but SATA only has master, theres no slave drives! which makes a difference there where as ATA has 100,133 and 166, there isnt much difference in thier performance but if you have a ATA166 and a ATA100 on the same IDE channel you only get ATA100 performance even you have paid more for the ATA166 to get a little bit more! you not gonna get it, and if you have a DVD and a HDD on the same IDE channel you only get whatever the DVD drives has at max, which doesnt happens to SATA, and thier reliability are very much the same yes, but the price isnt so high for SATA so why not?!

Unless if you go for the Raptor then theres a big difference in price but they are very nice drives to have! to me its worthy! but everyone have thier own opinion on that one!

Optikus

B0rG wrote:

Hmm... there is always a choice between performance and reliability

Performance is not a big issue here, since my mobo is about a year old and does not support the latest SATA 150. I'd say I'd rather go for size and reliability. What I wanted was 2*200G Maxtors HDDs - the ones with 3 years warranty, I've got one of those (well 120G actually) in my internet machine and it's been up 24/7 since september last year. I'm wandering if SATA can give that kind of reasonably cheap reliability...

Reliabilty is going to be the same, just better performance in SATA epecially in RAID, as striker has explained.

B0rG

2 StRiKeR

Thanks for the insight Don't really want to spend much money on it... Say around E270 for 400G will do. I usually buy a pair of matching HDDs - that makes a bit of performance for what I do: databases, virtual machines, "ghosting" and other crap.

What I wanted to avoid is that extra bother with installing extra hdd/controller drives before you install operating system because I need around 7 operating system installed permanently (not counting the virtual machines)...

You running Seagate's? Can you tell how are they in action? Have you been using them for long?

B0rG

2 Optikus

Can you tell me more about RAID performance gains? I'd prolly go for RAID 0 (there isn't much options as my mobo only supports RAID 0 or 1) and as far as I understood RAID idea is sacrificing perfomance for the sake or reliability :-)

Optikus

B0rG wrote:

2 Optikus

Can you tell me more about RAID performance gains? I'd prolly go for RAID 0 (there isn't much options as my mobo only supports RAID 0 or 1) and as far as I understood RAID idea is sacrificing perfomance for the sake or reliability :-)

You can sacrifice Space for Securitie in RAID 1 for example 2x80Gb drives appear as only 1x80Gb writing to both drives but if one fails it gose to the back up drive.. RAID 0 2x80Gb appears as 1x160Gb and gives you Performance by writing across all the drives at the same time a little bit in each giving you far better performance but there is a slight risk if one drive fails they all do.

StRiKeR

2 of them seagate I been using for months and have no problem with them, and they perform very well in raid0, not as fast as the raptors ofcoz, the raptors are as fast as a single scsi when running in raid0!

if you want to get 2 SATA 200GB Seagate plus a SATA controller it cost you no more than €300, depends where you get them from tho, but if you already have SATA onboard then cheaper again!

SATA are treated like SCSI thats the difference compare to ATA drives, as well as that SATA uses less CPU time than IDE! thats the whole idea of designing them at the first place, SATA 2.0 will be out soon enough too and they are suppose to be even better, I've read some info about them but have to wait to see how they perform when they are actually out!

I would have got another 2 Seagates if it wasnt the raptors being so actractive with the 10,000rpm rather than 7,200rpm!

having so many OS will slow down the performance of your drives due to the usage being higher!

my reason of having so many drives is that I can optimize the entire system better than having just a C Drive!

if you read up some more info, having your pagefile on a seperate physical drive will boost your performance and I have my page file splitt to 2 halfs on 2 physical raid0 rather than just 1 and none on my system, as well as that I have all temp folders on the d drive, I have 3 set of raid0 as you can see, c: is my system, d: is my storage and temps, e: is where my videos be render to, so app runs from c: read sources from d: and write to e:, does that make sense to you?

RicardoSmith

Can you get external enclosures for SATA drives?

Optikus

RicardoSmith wrote:

Can you get external enclosures for SATA drives?

You can get a box for SATA but there is no point really because it is going at the speed of the USB 1 or 2, as opossed to the faster SATA interface.

B0rG

Optikus wrote:

You can sacrifice Space for Securitie in RAID 1 for example 2x80Gb drives appear as only 1x80Gb writing to both drives but if one fails it gose to the back up drive.. RAID 0 2x80Gb appears as 1x160Gb and gives you Performance by writing across all the drives at the same time a little bit in each giving you far better performance but there is a slight risk if one drive fails they all do.

Oh, cheers.
so RAID 1 is what they call "mirroring"? I usually confuse them, and too lazy for googling it every time... It's just one of the things I constantly forget :-)

B0rG

StRiKeR wrote:

if you read up some more info, having your pagefile on a seperate physical drive will boost your performance and I have my page file splitt to 2 halfs on 2 physical raid0 rather than just 1 and none on my system, as well as that I have all temp folders on the d drive, I have 3 set of raid0 as you can see, c: is my system, d: is my storage and temps, e: is where my videos be render to, so app runs from c: read sources from d: and write to e:, does that make sense to you?

Believe it or not, but It actually does
Let's see what I have
c: - this is FAT32 partition for ghosting. Ghosting is very imprortant when you set your dev environment. And I'm very fussy about my dev environment :-)
d: - it's just some temp location, currently all filled with mp3s - need to burn them.
e: - w2k pro installation - general messing about operating system - internet browsing, virus check, disk doctorate, etc. nothing serious on that.
f: - w2k srv - this is main dev environment for win32: vstudio, vmware, sql server, oracle (this one actually sits on virtual machine, and that virtual machine split up between 2 harddrives)
g: - xppro - this is pure gaming... What else can you do with xp anyway? ;-)
h: - fat32 - games & mp3 ;-) happened historically - I used to game under win98, and just never get around reformatting this one.
i: - w2k3 server - this is .net development environment. vstudio, sql server, vmware and all that, but .net only. prefer my dev platform to be the same as client platform, you never know what clients are doing with thier os'es
k: - fat32 just a distribution garbage
l: - messing :-) currently has 20 gig extra drive for wmware, which hostes 15 gigs oracle database, that I'm currently trying to optimise... hopelessly... trying... to optimise... yes...

where was I?... ah, yeah

m: - virtual machines home
n: - xphome installation... don't really know why I have it... I suppose it happened when I wanted to get my mechwarrior working. it didn't.
p:, q: - network shares
w: - this is "all work" drive. development projects, documentation, code archive, vss - all the important stuff. need to get it backed up... really.

let's see - 7 os, 13 partitions...

StRiKeR

not many people know how to set up the system for best performance, they only know to overclock, but that doesnt mean they are getting the best performance! the entire system setup is what gives the end result!

Deadwing

One thing i never understood. When people talked about SATA here, they always used it in the context of RAID. So do SATA drives have to be used in a raid array? Or can you use them as standalone drives, or use 1 IDE & 1 SATA etc?

RicardoSmith

Deadwing wrote:

....Or can you use them as standalone drives, or use 1 IDE & 1 SATA etc?

Yes you can. Its just another interface.

You can use RAID with IDE, SCSI SATA

Optikus wrote:

You can get a box for SATA but there is no point really because it is going at the speed of the USB 1 or 2, as opossed to the faster SATA interface.

The point is that the SATA drives seem to be cheaper and on special offers more often than IDE drives. Also I've seen external SATA connectors on a couple of new systems. So they'll appear eventually. USB2 is adequate speedwise for an external backup drive.

B0rG wrote:

....What I wanted to avoid is that extra bother with installing extra hdd/controller drives before you install operating system because I need around 7 operating system installed permanently (not counting the virtual machines)...

Why do you need 7 OS on one machine? You'd think you be better with more than one machine! Any raid setup has to be installed before the OS. If you are using RAID 0 and theres a problem you'll have to rebuild the raid and then reinstall all those OS. I was you I'd probably just the boot loader on one drive and then use RAID1 with two other drives.

If you use a RAID controller card and it fails, you can just replace it. You'll be able to get all you data. If you use the RAID on your motherboard, and it fails then you'll have to replace the motherboard. Usually drives in a RAID cannot be used with a controller other than the one they where built with. So if the RAID on the motherboard failed, its unlikely you'd be able to swap in a controller card and get the RAID back.

Thats my amateur understanding of it all.

Optikus

RicardoSmith wrote:

The point is that the SATA drives seem to be cheaper and on special offers more often than IDE drives. Also I've seen external SATA connectors on a couple of new systems. So they'll appear eventually. USB2 is adequate speedwise for an external backup drive.

Where the fcuk do you live please take me to the magical place where they sell SATA drives cheaper than IDE drives, and no one understands the concept of the EDIT button.. i never said you can't get SATA external box's all i said thats it a waste if you want an external drive just use IDE as USB will be causing a bigger bottle neck on SATA.

StRiKeR

some people just like to spam or make thier post count higher by doing that!so annoying, wouldnt mind if it happens once or twice sometimes but not all the time!

and theres plenty of time to do research before posting, so why just thinking there is, what good is it to think? because you are not sure!

if you trying to make an arguement then dont be thinking, do your home work before you start crap!

everyone have thier own choice in whatever ways they like to setup thier system, it will cost alot more money to have 7 systems rather than 1 system with 7 OS, thats why!

RicardoSmith

If you have a problem with a post. Report it to the mods. Don't whine about it off topic in the thread. For me it costs more money to reinstall 7 OS'es and associated applications then to buy a couple of machines or disk. Horses for courses. Generally the good special offers online are for S-ATA disks not IDE disks. You'd think since there is a edit button, that the spelling and grammar in most posts would be better.

sceptre

Deadwing wrote:

Or can you use them as standalone drives, or use 1 IDE & 1 SATA etc?

You can use them as standalone drives or mix and match the two. Lots of newer motherboards will probably only have one IDE socket if they have SATA though but there's the old PCI card solution for that.

Optikus

RicardoSmith wrote:

If you have a problem with a post. Report it to the mods. Don't whine about it off topic in the thread. I'll leave you to it.

Im not whining ...what are you chatting about.... now please tell me where you can get SATA drives cheaper than IDE... Has anyone else heard of this new phenominom where newer technology is beening sold cheaper than its older counter parts.. cos i would love to know.

StRiKeR

i think it was me he's was talking about mate, hey you cant really blame me tho, at start he asked you a question, then after that it looks to me like he was trying to start an arguement with you! just doesnt sounds right!

and no I have not seen a SATA drive that is cheaper that IDE drives yet!!! or will there ever be, no one knows!

pickarooney

Optikus wrote:

PLEASE USE THE EDIT BUTTON... no need for a multiple post one minute apart.

Yeah, that's right, you tell 'em! (while cluttering up another thread with pointless shíte)

B0rG

2 RicardoSmith
Excellent point about the raid thing there. I think I will stay away from it - just keep two matching hdds.

7 OSes? hmm, didn't I explain earlier? Anyways: 2 for development, 1 for messing around, 1 for gaming, win98 - that's because no matter how many DOS bootable floppies I make, I still can't find them - just easier to install 98 :-) That's 5 already. And the other 2 just for testing - installed, ghosted, tried something, didn't like it, ghosted back. I usually do that with any new piece of software - much easier to see what registry keys are affected, what it does, how it works, does it do anything stupid, etc...

And more about 7 OSes. I do have a second computer - just a production server. Only one OS on that one.

There are numerous problems with getting another computer: space for box, space for monitor and keyboard. Connecting through a changer doesn't give a good results on my monitor (22" 1200x1000 x 100Hz). Buying an expensive switching setup seems like a waste of money. And of course price of the box is a big factor - buying more HDDs seem much easier.

Optikus

pickarooney wrote:

Yeah, that's right, you tell 'em! (while cluttering up another thread with pointless shíte)

Roffle surley that has to be the most contadictory post ever!!!!

How is it pointless you stupid idiot.. i was making a point on something completly untrue he said and thought i would just add the fact that there is a edit button..it is you who just made a pointless comment that IS cluttering this thread..

vishal

i am not sure if this has been posted but i don't think you can use windows 98 with sata. only xp with sp2 and 2000 with service pack 4. or am i wrong?

B0rG

2 vishal
Tried two motherboards today at work:
one cheap VIA ... {some numbers} don't remember exactly. Only allows RAID drives. Plus BIOS RAID utility didn't work for me. Interestingly enough Norton GHOST 98 managed to see the extra drive.

After that put the SATA drive into one of the HP/Compaq business desktops (I think 330 uT or something). That had much nicer SATA bios and the drive is visible from DOS machine. Only 137G though...

B0rG

As for SATA drives being cheaper:
Komplett sells Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA 200G for E116.
Maxtor DiamondMax9 200G IDE cost E135 and you have to preorder that.

As mentioned earlier - do your homework.

Optikus

B0rG wrote:

As for SATA drives being cheaper:
Komplett sells Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA 200G for E116.
Maxtor DiamondMax9 200G IDE cost E135 and you have to preorder that.

As mentioned earlier - do your homework.

Well i cant see that IDE drive anywhere priced at that price... but here are some examples all from Komplett.ie of exact same drives but one is SATA the other is IDE
Western Digital caviar 200Gb 7200rpm 8mb ...IDE:115euro, SATA:123euro
Seagate Barricuda 200Gb 7200rpm 8mb ....IDE116euro, SATA:125.04euro

Can you see the patteren emerging here.. generally SATA costs more than IDE.. it new technology..now i have done my homework, but i already knew this anyway.. the diamond max 10 your on about was probably on special offer or something ..but please believe me , im not trying to lie to you Borg. SATA cost more than IDE...its a no brainer really.

B0rG

2 Optikus

I see the argument you're trying to make, I'm just making the opposite :-)
SATA - is "relatively" new technology, but it's picking up very fast, more motherboards have SATA slots on board and some of IDE lines are being closed (as with Maxtor's DiamondMax9). As well, I wouldn't try to research market trends just by looking at only Irish and even UK retailers, as we all here know "ireland market" is just a bit too small.
This should give you a fair idea:
http://www.atlant.ru/comar/grp200/sst1414/

This is computer components price database for computer retailors in St-Petersburg, Russia (5 mln people population).

So, in fewer words: SATA is the future - give it a year or so and it will be much cheaper than IDE.

Optikus

B0rG wrote:

2 Optikus

I see the argument you're trying to make, I'm just making the opposite :-)
SATA - is "relatively" new technology, but it's picking up very fast, more motherboards have SATA slots on board and some of IDE lines are being closed (as with Maxtor's DiamondMax9). As well, I wouldn't try to research market trends just by looking at only Irish and even UK retailers, as we all here know "ireland market" is just a bit too small.
This should give you a fair idea:
http://www.atlant.ru/comar/grp200/sst1414/

This is computer components price database for computer retailors in St-Petersburg, Russia (5 mln people population).

So, in fewer words: SATA is the future - give it a year or so and it will be much cheaper than IDE.

Yes but never CHEAPER than IDE. oh and as for the link my Russian's not that good, but the prices looked good.

B0rG

somehow, they managed not to pay VAT on computer components... not sure how it works, but we have a saying:
if an accountant pays all taxes and still alive - he's fired.

Optikus

Id say the shipped charges would more than make up for the tax's if we were to purchase from them.

B0rG

They don't ship :-)
Just don't.

Different market, different reasons. They way they work: you just phone up, ask about availability and if they take hard currency, then go to some dodgy place outside of town, handle the cash and get your merchandise :-) If you're nice to them, you make friends, they'll give you 10% discount and some nice upgrade price or a sound technical advice. And I do mean "sound" "technical" "advice". Something that I really miss here for a while...

I usually buy some stuff when I go home. Normally I won't buy HDDs - because if it fails you have to get a replacement, and you do really need HDD quickly. With other stuff like mobo's, cpu's and graphics - it's easy - it either works straight away (and will work for 3 years till you decide it's time to throw it away) or doesn't work. then you get back to that dodgy place and change it for a working one