Economics of SATA hard drive

Peter van der Goes wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Warra wrote

Find a cheaper PCI SATA adaptor on ebay.

Question, as our IT support wants to put a SATA drive in my office PC by using such an
adaptor, is there a performance penalty involved because the adaptor uses the PCI bus?

Yes, but his is an older system where you wont notice anything.

I want to point it out if there is before they use that option.

Depending on what is put on the drive, you may not notice
anything much, speed wise. You need to be using the drive
pretty aggressively to see any effect of the PCI bus.

kony wrote
Rod Speed wrote
kony wrote
Warra wrote

Am in the UK. Running an old system which works quite well:
Via 266 mobo with Duron 1800 processor and 768MB of SD-RAM.

Will upgrade the system when I need the extra power. Currently
need to add to my data storage. Don't want to get Parallel IDE
(PATA) because newer mobos will support only SATA.

Newer boards will support at least one PATA channel
because OEMs (and others too) are still using and
preferring PATA optical drives.

Yes, but one PATA channel may well not be enough,
most obviously if you want to have two optical drives,
you're stuffed, no where to put the PATA hard drives.

yes, that's why if/when the time comes after that next
system is purchased, one could buy the PCI IDE card.

Makes a lot more sense to buy a SATA drive now and a
PCI SATA card now. No point in crippling the new decent
performance system by having the hard drives on a PCI card.

Actually, I'd expect by that time there would be
PCI Express PATA cards in the market enough
for them to be price-competitive and choose
that over the 32bit/33Mhz PCI alternative.

Unlikely to be price competitive to a PCI SATA card now
since there will be little demand for PCI Express PATA cards.

Plus, the same argument you are making about the need for a
PCI SATA adapter could go the other way- that you buy a PCI
PATA adapter for the next system "IF" it ends up needing one.

Yes, but the newer motherboards tend to be short on card slots too.

Yes, it is a sad irony that with all the great transitions going
on, many people are left with less versatile systems for their
real-world uses. I still look for boards with maximum # of
PCI slots, particularly towards the bottom of the board so
they aren't conflicting with good video card cooling if utilized.

That does radically limit your choices tho, particularly
if you want a competitively priced motherboard.

And I dont have many cards at all in the newer systems now,
essentially because everything comes standard except for a
gaming class video card and I dont even bother with those,
tho I do add a decent dual head video card to all systems now.

If you don't plan on having more than one optical drive in
your next system and plan on purchasing it within at least
the next couple years, it is most likely it will have PATA.

Going with SATA now does give you more future tho.

?? How far into the future does one need to look?

Just far enough to notice that there are already motherboards
with just one IDE port, and bugger all card slots.

Since PATA channel(s) on still on new boards and backwards compatible,

Not necessarily enough of them tho. If you want two
optical drives, you're stuffed if its only got one IDE port.

it could even make more sense to have the PATA drive
for data recovery purposes, IF one didn't have any other
SATA capable systems yet. IOW, new system goes
down and user only had the old PATA capable one.

You can always cripple along with just one optical
drive in that recovery situation if you need to.

And you get the better SATA cabling now too.

Yes but it seems the least relevant issue, I don't
recall a lot of users having any system functionality
problems because of the PATA cable.

They can do when the ATA standard cable isnt long
enough and they need to use a non standard one.

Certainly SATA is more esthetically pleasing and very
convenient for eSATA drives... I'm not against SATA
at all but at this point in time either can work equally well

Yes, but the longer standard SATA cable can be handy too.

and having to buy a card later is a minor
expense, if necessary which it may not be.

Makes a lot more sense to buy a SATA drive now and a PCI SATA
card now, off ebay, from a retail operation that sells on ebay.

Can get a 250GB Samsung hard drive (from Komplett)
for about £60 inc delivery which is a real bargain.

But a PCI SATA adaptor by Sunsway from the same dealer costs
£19. It supports 2 SATA devices. That is definitely not a bargain
as it's one- third of the price of the 250 GB drive! What a swizz!

I don't know what all hardware costs over there, but trying
to equate it based on % of a budget grade drive is a bit
misguided. The card has, as any product does, a certain bit
over overhead in design, manufacture, delivery, marketing,
warranty coverage, etc, etc.

Cards can be surprisingly cheap anyway. Clearly
a lot easier to manufacture than a hard drive too.

What viable alternatives do I have?

The best alternative is to buy a PATA drive.

Nope, the best alternative is a cheaper PCI SATA adaptor.

Nope, we don't know that OP would ever need to buy a card at all.

Unlikely that he'll be happy with just one hard drive and one
optical drive. He's already got more than that in his dinosaur.

It's entirely conceivable that if a PATA drive were bought
today, next system will have one free PATA position... or
at worst, THEN the PATA card is bought, and possibly
then in PCI Express format which is a further benefit.

Makes a lot more sense to cripple the dinosaur,
not the new one and not limit which motherboard
you can use in the new system.

SATA over PCI is often slower too.

Sure, but its a slow old dinosaur anyway, bet he wont even notice.

Looking beyond the synthetic benchmarks, most people
have nic or sound, etc, on their PCI bus already.

Most people are irrelevant, what matters is what he has in his dinosaur.

It will be faster than an SATA, because not only will you
be avoiding use of a PCI SATA card (slower because
it's on the PCI bus instead of southbridge integrated as
your PATA controller onboard, is), but ALSO because
your motherboard's Via chipset is known to have a
somewhat low realized PCI throughput.

It isnt exactly a red hot performer, bet he wont even notice.

It can be expected at least 15% slower in many uses,

And if its not the boot drive, I bet he wont even notice that.

that's significant enough to perceive when the
HDD is already the bottleneck for many uses.

Not when its not the boot drive.

In other words, your board is among the
worst to use a PCI SATA controller on.

Oh bull****.

Have you ever actually TRIED a PCI card on that chipset?

Yep, its quite feasible.

I have... benched it too. Don't recall the scores but
did recall the very significant difference in use of a
PCI controller on that and prior, next gen Via chipsets.

Sure, but its already a slow old dinosaur, that isnt
going to change with a non boot drive on a PCI card.

Google for the info if you don't believe,

If you Google,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...ATA+benchmarks

look at the very first hit, it happens to be KT266A...
http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/...70/index3.html

... and this is even BEFORE one tries to use the PCI
bus for other concurrent things like audio or whatever.

Its a slow old dinosaur, no news.

In computing most things are typical, but occasionally
some things stand out as very good or bad. Via
chipsets PCI performance in that era were very bad.

Bull****, they're just mediocre performers.

kony wrote
Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote

Ya think? Prove it.

no need to prove what is common knowledge.

There is no problem doing it, IDT (independant
device timing) means the HDD will run at full
speed unless the optical was a PIO drive.

And its trivial to prove anyway, just use a decent benchmark
like HDTach with and without the DVD drive on the cable.

And if you have enough of a clue to be using a DVD burner
because they are so cheap now that its not worth bothering
with DVD readers anymore, plenty of those are ATA100 anyway.

kony wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:53:42 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:


My new motherboard has 2 PATA channels. Wasn`t enough for me, so
paid about £10 for a PCI PATA card, giving me another 2 channels,
allowing me 8 PATA drives. Maybe this would be the better way round
for you to go - get a PATA drive now, and buy the PCI card in the
future IF your new M/B doesn`t have enough channels.

Makes more sense to do it the other way, buy a SATA drive
and a SATA PCI card, because that will be used only in the
dinosaur that wont be that fast anyway. No point in crippling
the speed of the hard drives in a new fast system by having
them on a PCI card.



It is amazing that today's mindset makes it a problem to
even buy a drive with an interface that actually SUPPORTS
it's use instead of buying a PCI card.

Not a clue what you are trying to say there.

It's so very backwards.

Daniel James wrote:
In article , Warra wrote:
Don't want to get Parallel IDE (PATA) because newer mobos will
support only SATA.

I doubt very much that there will be any motherboards that support
SATA but not PATA within the useful working life of any disk drive
you buy today, and I certainly don't think the majority of boards
will be SATA only for quite some time. Even if such boards were to
become common you will still be able to use one with PATA drives via
a PCI (or PCIe, or whatever the future may bring) interface card.

PATA drives are still slightly cheaper than an equivalent SATA drive,
and while SATA connection may be faster than PATA neither will be
saturated by data coming from one of today's disk drives, so speed
isn't really an issue (and if speed were your primary concern I'd
tell you to get SCSI).

I really don't think it's worth worrying that a PATA drive you buy
today will disadvantage you in any way.

Corse it will if the new system only has a single IDE port.

Rod Speed wrote:
Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote:

Warra wrote:


Am in the UK. Running an old system which works quite well: Via 266
mobo with Duron 1800 processor and 768MB of SD-RAM.

Will upgrade the system when I need the extra power. Currently need
to add to my data storage. Don't want to get Parallel IDE (PATA)
because newer mobos will support only SATA.

Can get a 250GB Samsung hard drive (from Komplett) for about £60 inc
delivery which is a real bargain.

But a PCI SATA adaptor by Sunsway from the same dealer costs £19. It
supports 2 SATA devices. That is definitely not a bargain as it's
one- third of the price of the 250 GB drive! What a swizz!

What viable alternatives do I have?



Consider getting a PATA drive of whatever size fits your needs. When
its time to move to another motherboard, look for one that will
support the hard drive. If it only has one PATA interface, it may be
possible to use it for both the hard drive and a DVD drive. Since
DVDs typically runs at 66mhz, the hard drive would probably run at
that reduced bandwidth.


Hasnt worked like that for many years now.

What "hasn't worked like that for many years now." Drive speed? Data
transfer date? DVD running at 66mhz? What?

SATA has the potential for 150mB/sec, but drives can't read or write
that fast.

DVDs detect on my system at 66mhz. That's faster than the hard drive
read/write rate.




BUT the good news is that hard drives rarely transfer data any faster than that except
for burst from cache.


Oh bull****.


Its prefectly OK for you to be wrong.

The fact is that except for modern drives, the read/write rate for a
hard drive does not exceed 60mB. So a parallel interface running at
66mhz would be enough to carry the data at full rate.

Sorry, but thanks for playing.

Rod Speed wrote:

Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote:

~misfit~ wrote:

Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote:


Warra wrote:



Am in the UK. Running an old system which works quite well: Via
266 mobo with Duron 1800 processor and 768MB of SD-RAM.

Will upgrade the system when I need the extra power. Currently
need to add to my data storage. Don't want to get Parallel IDE
(PATA) because newer mobos will support only SATA.

Can get a 250GB Samsung hard drive (from Komplett) for about £60
inc delivery which is a real bargain.

But a PCI SATA adaptor by Sunsway from the same dealer costs £19. It supports 2 SATA
devices. That is definitely not a bargain as
it's one- third of the price of the 250 GB drive! What a swizz!

What viable alternatives do I have?



Consider getting a PATA drive of whatever size fits your needs. When its time to move
to another motherboard, look for one that will
support the hard drive. If it only has one PATA interface, it may
be possible to use it for both the hard drive and a DVD drive. Since DVDs typically
runs at 66mhz, the hard drive would probably
run at that reduced bandwidth. BUT the good news is that hard
drives rarely transfer data any faster than that except for burst
from cache.


What a crock of misinformation!


Ya think? Prove it.


YOU made those stupid pig ignorant claims.

YOU get to do the proving.

THATS how it works.

I have and made you look pretty uninformed.

Rod Speed wrote:

Ed Light wrote:

"Horst Franke" nospam@invalid wrote in message
...

In news:K6omg.198$lv.167@fed1read12 Ed Light typed:

My PATA HD and DVD are on the same channel and the HD benches up to
its maximum of 40 Mb/S.
Device manager lists them at UDMA 133 and 33. Win XP Home. Whether
this can happen may depend on the bios.

Hi Ed, and what has this to do with the OP's inquery?
He asked about SATA!
Horst

You missed part of the thread. Though I had some news server problems
and maybe answered a bit off the appropriate sub-thread. Not sure. I
had to skip some messages that wouldn't load.

The OP presently has a pata m/b and doesn't really want a pci sata
card. One alternative suggested was to get a pata drive and later it
would still work on a newer motherboard, then that newer motherboards
have only one pata channel, then that having a hd and dvd on the same
channel should drop the udma speed to the dvd's.


No it doesnt.


Now my post is relevant.


No it isnt, its just plain wrong.

It seems you're spreading misinformation. Could you please get your
facts right and stop this line of crap you're spreading?

Rod Speed wrote:

Ed Light wrote

Rod Speed wrote


Yes, but one PATA channel may well not be enough,
most obviously if you want to have two optical drives,
you're stuffed, no where to put the PATA hard drives.


To the rescue!


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822998008


Dont need that if you have enough of a clue to buy a SATA drive.

Don't need SATA if you have enough of a clue to understand how a hard
drive works and its speed limitations.

Maybe you should get a clue.

"kony" wrote in message
...
There is no problem doing it, IDT (independant device
timing) means the HDD will run at full speed unless the
optical was a PIO drive.

I used to have an early Zip drive (PIO 1 at best) on the same cable as an
UDMA 100 HDD, attached to a UDMA 66-capable motherboard. There did not seem
to be any measurable impact on HDD performance while the Zip drive was idle.

Alex