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Quick Questions: IDE (SCSI) vs SATA and SATA2
1) Are IDE/SCSI hard drive outdated technology? (sorry if I am using
the wrong terminology... is it EIDE?) 2) Is SATA faster or better in some way, how? 3) How much better / faster / more expensive is SATA 2? 4) Is it better to use one in particular of these configurations for Windows - if so which one and why? 5) My Bios / Asrock motherboard configuration has a strange pecularity: If shut down by power-off (bad way to shut down) it 'forgets' to look first at the SATA drive for Windows (as it was set up to do). So when I used to have the OS on a SATA drive and powered down in this way, I always had to start next session on the PC by going into Bios and changing the default Boot hard drive from the IDE/SCSI hard drive to the SATA drive where Windows was! Extremely irritating - nothing seemed to stop this from happening. Recently when I had some problem and had to re-install the OS, I decided to put it on the old IDE/SCSI drive, just so I wouldn't have to waste time on going into the BIOS on a regular basis. But what caused this behaviour in the first place? Anything I could have done to fix it? |
#2
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Quick Questions: IDE (SCSI) vs SATA and SATA2
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:36:23 -0700, Cordelia
wrote: 1) Are IDE/SCSI hard drive outdated technology? (sorry if I am using the wrong terminology... is it EIDE?) "Outdated" is a bit of an arbitrary term. You have a need, a system that can or can't support IDE/SCSI, the most common being PATA or commonly called ATA100 or ATA133, and devices available to use these interfaces which do the job fine. On the other hand since SATA is newer and eventually production of PATA will slow down quite a bit (IIRC, Seagate has already planned to stop producing PATA hard drives soon) limiting your PATA product choices and possibly raising prices. 2) Is SATA faster or better in some way, how? The SATA connector is more fragile, but the cable thinner and easier to route, due to it's thinness and that there is only one device per cable. SATA has the potential to be significantly faster, but current single drives cannot transfer the data from the platter to the bus even as fast as ATA133, so the primary improvement is a small increase from transfers to/fro the HDDs onboard memory cache. 3) How much better / faster / more expensive is SATA 2? Minimal if any addt'l expense, barely any faster, but it is current technology and should have the longest forward support of the 3 low-cost common desktop/PC drive interfaces. 4) Is it better to use one in particular of these configurations for Windows - if so which one and why? No, windows has nothing to do with it really. Millions of systems prove any of them will do the job acceptibly... but since SATA2 has both low cost and good forward-looking availability, it should be the preferred interface for a new system built today. 5) My Bios / Asrock motherboard configuration has a strange pecularity: If shut down by power-off (bad way to shut down) it 'forgets' to look first at the SATA drive for Windows (as it was set up to do). So when I used to have the OS on a SATA drive and powered down in this way, I always had to start next session on the PC by going into Bios and changing the default Boot hard drive from the IDE/SCSI hard drive to the SATA drive where Windows was! Extremely irritating - nothing seemed to stop this from happening. Consider it an unusual bios bug. The bios is supposed to allow you to choose the preferred and/or boot order for the device you want, and store that setting saved to nonvolatile memory. When the system is next reset or turned on, it should be booting to it. You might occasionally check Asrock's website to see if they have (Or ever do) come up with a bios update that fixes this... and also recheck your bios settings just in case you had overlooked some setting that might resolve it. Recently when I had some problem and had to re-install the OS, I decided to put it on the old IDE/SCSI drive, just so I wouldn't have to waste time on going into the BIOS on a regular basis. But what caused this behaviour in the first place? Anything I could have done to fix it? See above. Whether any particular PATA or SATA drive you have is a better choice than the other, might depend more on the inherant performance of the drive due to it's age and capacity far more than which interface it uses. Since you described the PATA drive as "old", it is likely smaller and slower due to it's age and so the remaining question is whether you find it to be too small or too slow for your particular uses. Plenty of people do keep their older drive for the OS and add a newer and (usually) faster drive for addt'l storage. Only you can decide when the older drive performance is comparitively low enough that it is important to replace it or exchange the roles of the two... or buy another drive since relying on an "old" drive to run the OS or store data becomes a risk since no drive lasts forever... while it's good to make frequent backups regardless of drive age, having a drive fail at an inconvenient time and interrupt use of the system can be more of a hassle than it's worth when drives today are so inexpensive for moderate capacity models. |
#3
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Quick Questions: IDE (SCSI) vs SATA and SATA2
That answers all my questions really clearly! Thank you so much for
explaining! It would have taken me ages to locate all this information in books and online. (You *really* know your stuff and you are good at explaining. Do you every think about that you could launch a website or podcast and become a hit online any day! :-) C. kony wrote: On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:36:23 -0700, Cordelia wrote: 1) Are IDE/SCSI hard drive outdated technology? (sorry if I am using the wrong terminology... is it EIDE?) "Outdated" is a bit of an arbitrary term. You have a need, a system that can or can't support IDE/SCSI, the most common being PATA or commonly called ATA100 or ATA133, and devices available to use these interfaces which do the job fine. On the other hand since SATA is newer and eventually production of PATA will slow down quite a bit (IIRC, Seagate has already planned to stop producing PATA hard drives soon) limiting your PATA product choices and possibly raising prices. 2) Is SATA faster or better in some way, how? The SATA connector is more fragile, but the cable thinner and easier to route, due to it's thinness and that there is only one device per cable. SATA has the potential to be significantly faster, but current single drives cannot transfer the data from the platter to the bus even as fast as ATA133, so the primary improvement is a small increase from transfers to/fro the HDDs onboard memory cache. 3) How much better / faster / more expensive is SATA 2? Minimal if any addt'l expense, barely any faster, but it is current technology and should have the longest forward support of the 3 low-cost common desktop/PC drive interfaces. 4) Is it better to use one in particular of these configurations for Windows - if so which one and why? No, windows has nothing to do with it really. Millions of systems prove any of them will do the job acceptibly... but since SATA2 has both low cost and good forward-looking availability, it should be the preferred interface for a new system built today. 5) My Bios / Asrock motherboard configuration has a strange pecularity: If shut down by power-off (bad way to shut down) it 'forgets' to look first at the SATA drive for Windows (as it was set up to do). So when I used to have the OS on a SATA drive and powered down in this way, I always had to start next session on the PC by going into Bios and changing the default Boot hard drive from the IDE/SCSI hard drive to the SATA drive where Windows was! Extremely irritating - nothing seemed to stop this from happening. Consider it an unusual bios bug. The bios is supposed to allow you to choose the preferred and/or boot order for the device you want, and store that setting saved to nonvolatile memory. When the system is next reset or turned on, it should be booting to it. You might occasionally check Asrock's website to see if they have (Or ever do) come up with a bios update that fixes this... and also recheck your bios settings just in case you had overlooked some setting that might resolve it. Recently when I had some problem and had to re-install the OS, I decided to put it on the old IDE/SCSI drive, just so I wouldn't have to waste time on going into the BIOS on a regular basis. But what caused this behaviour in the first place? Anything I could have done to fix it? See above. Whether any particular PATA or SATA drive you have is a better choice than the other, might depend more on the inherant performance of the drive due to it's age and capacity far more than which interface it uses. Since you described the PATA drive as "old", it is likely smaller and slower due to it's age and so the remaining question is whether you find it to be too small or too slow for your particular uses. Plenty of people do keep their older drive for the OS and add a newer and (usually) faster drive for addt'l storage. Only you can decide when the older drive performance is comparitively low enough that it is important to replace it or exchange the roles of the two... or buy another drive since relying on an "old" drive to run the OS or store data becomes a risk since no drive lasts forever... while it's good to make frequent backups regardless of drive age, having a drive fail at an inconvenient time and interrupt use of the system can be more of a hassle than it's worth when drives today are so inexpensive for moderate capacity models. |
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