Which SATA drive to buy?

c0balt · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 441 Location: Germany

Hi,
i need a new harddrive, so ill get me a SATA HD.
criterias are:

- ~160GB
- fast, of course

- "normal" noise (it shouldnt be louder than my IDE HD)
- price <180

which model can you recommend?

thx in advance

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject:

c0balt,

Nosie wise, SATA does nothing. It just a different electronic interface.

Beware of the same drive offered in both IDE and SATA versions.
They are often IDE electronics with a SATA converter on the back end. So its no faster than the IDE version but costs more because of the extra bits.
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Volt3r · Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:21 pm Post subject:

Some times ago i`ve got two sata drives furthermore in software raid0 and i tell you that it will be better to buy PATA disc which are cheaper. I sold them and buy Sata but 10000 RPM (WD Raptor 36gb). Now raptor is in my opinion only sata rewarding disc...

() · l33t Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 610

If you're using a Silicon Image controller, you should be aware that the transfer speed is limited with Seagate models (there should be a blacklist in the libata driver source I think). Right now I don't think there's a huge gap in performance between the different drives, but you might want to check out different reviews. Apart from that I think drives with NCQ (Native Command Queueing) are on their way, although I'm not sure if the controller has to support this explicitly (probably not?). NCQ will reorder disk access to improve efficiency.
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c0balt · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 441 Location: Germany

() · l33t Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 610

You can take a look at anandtech for instance. I don't think it says if the rest of the drives are PATA or SATA, but as far as I know there isn't much of a performance difference between PATA and SATA models.
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cryos · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Posts: 242 Location: US

c0balt · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 441 Location: Germany

Malakin · Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 6:52 pm Post subject:

If you want a quiet reliable drive you can't go wrong with Seagate.

There is no performance difference between pata and sata with current drives. The pata interface runs at either 100 or 133MB/s, sata runs at 150MB/s but the drives can only do about 60MB/s so they're nowhere near the limits. pata works great and you won't have any problems with it, sata costs a bit more and you might have problems with it, at least there seems to be a lot of sata threads on here.

The Raptors are too noisy for my liking (even the Raptor 2's) and their performance lead isn't exactly huge especially considering the price/noise.

blackstar · n00b Joined: 27 Feb 2004 Posts: 15

The best place for drive reviews is Storage Review. Check out their performance database for any modern drive.

nejiron · Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:19 am Post subject:

Although the hard drives can only run at 60MB/S and SATA is capable of 150MB/S, using PATA is still not worth it. At least in my case where I plan on having 4 drives in a RAID 0. This means ideally my 4 drives would be running at 240MB/S (assuming they are perfectly striped), but due to the SATA limit of the controller, they can move at a max of 150MB/S.

Dont bother with the Raptors, they arent worth the extra $$. You can get twice as much space for their cost. You would be better off getting 2 160GB 7200RPM drives and putting them on a RAID 0, than purchasing one 80GB 10000RPM drive.

320GB running at 14400RPM (in an ideal situation) vs 80GB 10000RPM

tough choice.

make sure if you use SATA you take advantage of the RAID features, it can dramatically increase your performance. but if one drive goes on a RAID 0.....
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pellaeon · n00b Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 12