Economics of SATA hard drive

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:55:24 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:


we can see this with any kinds of add-on cards that
the 3rd party cards are trailing behind the motherboard
adoption of PCI Express supportive chipsets. So far
only video cards have made a significant transition, enough
to expect a good choice of technology from most manufacturers.

Bet there wont be to support PATA drives
that are now well past their useby date.


Do you mind if I quote this at a later date? I'm pretty
sure there will be PATA cards available at reasonable cost.



There may be a few, but there wont be a good choice with those.

Cabling alone is a major downside
with a card that supports hard drives.


That is ridiculous. Cabling is a non-issue. SATA cables
are a little better in an esthetic sense but we can see
there is no problem at all using PATA cables and cards.
I have 2 systems with two PCI PATA cards in them currently.
Cables are quite manageable if one merely chooses the right
length of cable, rounded if desirable.


So we see with most add-on card functionality,

Yes, but there isnt that much in the way
of addon card functionality needed now.

.... but that's exactly the case with a PATA hard drive!
The OP doesn't NEED addon card at all! Rather you argue
that he should get one anyway... so apparently the argument
of built-in feature sets is never really enough for some
people, there is always the chance a feature addition will
be desirable and after all it IS why there are slots on
boards.



there is no reason to expect otherwise with PATA cards,

Every reason in face, its a technology thats passing its useby date
which isnt that easy to handle on a small addon card cable wise.

I have no explaination as to why you keep mentioning cables.
Cables are trivial, very easy to install and use on PATA.
It is not an issue.

No technology is past it's useby date when:

A) The system supports it.
B) Brand new current generation products are being sold
C) Next gen systems are expected to support it, at least 1
channel/2 devices.
D) Addon cards ARE expected to be in the market, as there
are still the present PCI cards even if one didn't want (or
have a free slot for) the anticipated PCI Express versions.

SATA is slightly superior, but that slight edge is easily
outweighed by the details or costs of implementation. It is
among the last things to consider unless one simply must
have a particular drive that only comes in SATA format like
a WD Raptor, but then if low latency is really that
important there is also SCSI if the buyer is considering a
PCI card to support whichever drive technology.



especially since there are still quite a few new PATA products being sold
but modern motherboards are cutting back to only one PATA channel.

I doubt too many will want to move too much from their dinosaurs
to their new system. Most just discard the system and start over
with a new one and move at most the monitors etc.

"Most" just buy a whole OEM system, but if you are claiming
they won't move stuff to their new system then it
innvalidates your entire argument about buying the SATA hard
drive... it is completely pointless if it wouldn't be moved
to the new system.



In other words, **** all of a market for that particular product.

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.

75MB/s is still sufficient for single drive use.
For more drives too when not reading sequentially.

Sufficent can depend on your definition,

Nope, on how you plan to use it.

Which is a definition, so your "nope" is doubly wrong.



as it is still a reduction and this already seen without any other
contention for bus throughput. Now more than ever people are
building HTPC or other special needs that can have an impact.

HTPCs arent particularly demanding on the hard drive anyway.


Quite wrong. Capture some uncompressed video while playing
back another video. HTPCs are often optimized for small
size which means they have less space for HDDs, fewer of
them. Such systems have have only one drive and
uncompressed video is too bandwidth intensive to be
captured to a remote destination on a lan so a local drive
has to do it. Granted one might prefer to use lossless
compression which eases the HDD performance requirement, but
either way we have a signficant data rate and we haven't
even considered the PCI utilization of this system yet.


Recall that at that time even using an sound card from the most
popular manufacturer caused a problem, when a PCI IDE card
was used. We haven't even considered any other devices yet.

Irrelevant to whether a SATA drive on a PCI card will work fine in that dinosaur.

If it's such a dinosaur, the last thing that makes sense is
to spend extra money on another PCI card for it.

kony wrote
Rod wrote

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.

It makes sense to buy a drive that uses the interface the system supports.

Nope, not when its replacement has poor support
for that interface and hard drives are often moved
to the next system by that level of system builder.

If we are considering that NEXT system,

And thats the only thing to do when the
current system is getting pretty obsolete now.

at that point in the future the best performance
won't come from a drive bought today either,

Doesnt matter if he wants to buy a barebones system and move
the new drive to that and use it as the boot drive on that system.

it will come from this future drive technology,

Bet it wont when he does come to upgrade.

or actually, a combination of two drives.

And that in spades. Modern single hard drives provide
all the performance most need in a personal system.

Further we have not established that the drive bought today
will actually need a PCI PATA card on that next system...

We do know that quite a few of the current systems only have
a single PATA channel and that its undesirable to be limiting
your choices to new motherboards that have more than one
PATA channel or quite a few card slots, particularly if you
intend to buy a value for money motherboard. And that is very
likely given what he previously chose to buy motherboard wise.

it was just a random speculation

Nope, nothing even remotely resembling anything like random speculation.

as a justification to buy something the user may
never need- any kind of PCI controller card.

Its a reason for getting a SATA drive instead of a PATA
drive because that approach clearly limits your future less.

For the low cost of a decent PCI SATA card off ebay.

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.

Oh?

Fraid so.

One would think there isn't a lot of demand for PCI
PATA cards since all boards had them for years,

They're almost entirely RAID cards which can
be used in a non RAID config if you want to.

and yet they are in the market at $15. There is no
reason to believe they won't be price conpetitive as
they are not an inherantly expensive product to make.

Sure, but there is unlikely to be much of a market for
PCI Express cards that can only accept PATA drives,
given that most modern motherboards are available
with RAID built in, and even the cabling alone is
a hassle with a PCI Express PATA RAID card.

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.

Yes it does, but if you don't buy a board with a fair # of slots,
the functionality of the system may likewise be radically reduced,

Nope, because so much is builtin now.

especially for some of us here who already have myriad PCI cards.

Most of which wont be any use on a new modern motherboard.

There might just be a reason why PCI NICs are now worth peanuts.

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.

Things come standard but not necessarily
with the features or performance one will want.

Thats what picking an appropriate motherboard is about.

Many don't buy or upgrade a system merely to get another
few % performance increase on CPU/etc but they want to
raise or at least retain the other positive system attributes
they'd previously enjoyed such as video capture, high
quality (not just paper spec) sound, eSATA ports.

There's plenty of motherboards around with the last two built in.

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.

... or you just buy the PCI PATA card as already mentioned, just
not a RAID card if the particular specimen won't support ATAPI.

Makes a lot more sense to buy a SATA drive and a PCI SATA card.

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.

Why would you bother with eBay when everyone
and their brother sells low cost SATA cards?

Because the ebay retail sellers are better value.

Seems like an unnecessary risk to me,

There's no risk.

especially when the # of sellers stocking them is SO great
that the purchase can be combined with some other parts
order to reduce if not eliminate the shipping cost (which
would tend to be about 1/4 the cost of the card).

Still better value.

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.

If he has these drives already, all the more reason to
have the PATA card in the new system to reuse them.

You dont know that the drives are
worth moving except with the new one.

If he needs MORE drives in the next system,
the obvious choice once he HAS the new system
is the SATA as it is then natively supported.

So it makes more sense to have the new drive
SATA too so he isnt crippled with a motherboard
that only has a single PATA channel.

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.

Actually for common tasks his system is plenty fast
enough to make the HDDs performance a bottleneck.

BUT NOT THE PCI BUS.

Once you go over a few hundred MHz CPU, HDD is the primary
bottleneck for web surfing, email, many office tasks... essentially
all the more common uses of a PC, even loading the OS.

BUT NOT THE PCI BUS.

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.

His system could end up faster if properly set up
than a brand new one that was crippled to the PCI
limits of the Via chipset and a PCI controller card.

Irrelevant, his new system wont be.

That is, at most common tasks. We could surely come
up with some hypothetical use that stressed the CPU or
other subsystem more, but most common tasks won't.

BUT NOT THE PCI BUS with a single SATA drive on the card.

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.

If it is only used for supplimental storage and there are no
large files being used, such as video editing, that is likely
true. It's still a waste of money for the SATA card though.

Nope, that small cost gives much more future in the new system.

He may well be able to save much more than that on the new
system by not needing to care how many PATA channels it
has, or now many card slots it has. He can pick one that
is very good value and which has no known downsides.

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

Not when its not the boot drive.

Maybe.

No maybe about it.

We will have to assume he's installing
the drive to actually use it somehow...

Yes, but you dont know that he is planning to boot off it.

And from his other comments, that appears to be unlikely.

so ultimately that use will dictate whether it's significant.

And its unlikely.

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.

It's significantly slower...

You dont know that it is with the particular chipset he has.

and at additional cost,

Peanuts.

and having to add the PCI card.

Hardly rocket science with a non boot drive.

Worst possible solution all "just in case"
he'll want to reuse the drive

He clear does want to reuse the drive, he said so.

AND "IF" he manages to use up all
the next systems PATA positions,

He isnt as limited in his choice of motherboards
if the ones with only one PATA channel are fine.

AND "IF" there weren't any better PCI Express
card alternatives at this point in the future.

Stupid to be doing that with the boot drive in a new system.

So many "IFS" that it becomes a shot in the
dark whether there will ever be a realized benefit,

Nope. We know for a fact that a SATA drive doesnt
restrict what he can choose in a new system.

but already there are clear detractions from the SATA card.

Nope, none. The only downside is that a PCI card is needed to use it.

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.

Actually it's not so slow for most uses,
except the primary bottleneck- the hard drive.

And a SATA drive wont have that problem.

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.

... if by mediocre you really mean "the most significant
performance limit to a modern HDD possible" then perhaps so.

That doesnt make it VERY BAD.

Putting a SATA card or ATA133 card on the
PCI bus of that Via chipset will be slower than
an ATA66 southbridge controller in actual use.

And I bet he wont even notice when its not the boot drive.

IF there were some gain in going the SATA route

There is, it doesnt limit your choices on the new system.

we could weigh the pros and cons but there is no actual gain,

Wrong, it doesnt limit your choices with the new system.

only a theory that some day in a certain situation
it "might" have the potential to be a gain.

No MIGHT about it with your choices with the new system.
Thats an absolute certainty, it does limit your choices if you
are stupid enough to get a PATA drive.

That is such a stretch it isn't even reasonable.

Wrong.

Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote
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

You're a pathological liar.

and made you look pretty uninformed.

Only in your pathetic little drug crazed fantasyland.

Every single individual who has chosen to comment on those pig
ignorant claims and crock of misinformation has done you like a dinner.

Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Ed Light wrote
Horst Franke nospam@invalid wrote
Ed Light wrote

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!

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.

How odd that everyone is saying its you doing that.

Could you please get your facts right

Been there, done that, and told you how to prove that
you stupid pig ignorant claim is just plain wrong too.

and stop this line of crap you're spreading?

Never ever could bull**** its way out of a wet paper bag.

Now where is the proof of that stupid claim you
made such a spectacular fool of yourself with ?

Merrill P. L. Worthington wrote
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."

Your last sentence.

Drive speed? Data transfer date? DVD running at 66mhz? What?

Your last sentence. Pure pig ignorant drivel.

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

Irrelevant to your last sentence which is pure pig ignorant drivel.

DVDs detect on my system at 66mhz.

Very likely.

That's faster than the hard drive read/write rate.

Presumably you mean slower.

Yes, but the hard drive isnt limited by the speed of the
DVD and thats completely trivial to prove using HDTach.

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.

Never ever could bull**** its way out of a wet paper bag.

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.

Pity the hard drive doesnt run at 66Mhz.

And you previously pig ignorantly claimed that the hard
drive would probably run at REDUCED BANDWIDTH anyway.

Sorry, but thanks for playing.

You're the one playing with your dick and fooling absolutely no one at all.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
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.

Wake up, Rod. He has a motherboard with no sata and doesn't want to buy a
pci card. If he gets a sata he'll have to get a card. I know -- so what.
Hemmm. Hawww.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
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.

You're not following the thread. Well, OK.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org

Which is completely irrelevant to what he said in the above para where he
was merely rehashing what was said before because of Hort****'s excessive
and compulsive snipping. Next time try and read before you snipe.

Folkert, thanks for that.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org

Hmm I'd like to filter out belligerents. Guess I'll start with Rod.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Ed Light wrote:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Ed Light wrote:
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.

Nope, not anymore.

How far back? KT133? Pentium 1?

Back about then.

Someone could have an old board, so I was right. Ta da. Well bye, I've got
you filtered.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org