serial ATA hard drive?

[Pesty]

Hello,

I have just ordered all the components I need to build myself a new PC.

I have ordered a Maxtor diamond max 9 ATA133 hard drive

The question is My mate recons I should have ordered a serial ATA Hard drive as it is much faster and my motherboard will support it. Is he right or would I notice the difference?
It may be too late to change the order am I worrying over nothing?

[Mikej]

I have a Maxstor Diamond in a machine that I built recently and it seems fine to me - there again I mainly use the machine for browsing, so little disk access.

I don't think you'll have any problems.

Mike.

[gopher]

Whats the motherboard ?

I thought (and may be completely wrong) that they motherboard would either support IDE or serial hard drives, not both (Although there were a few that supported more than 1 type of memory) - Serial ata is suppossed to be better but I think this is down to the fact that the limit on the number of devices is much higher rather then outright performance.

[rjo]

A couple of reports I have seen have found little dif in speed. FWIW I saw one test where the ata was no faster than current drives and they cost quite a bit more.
They will probably come into their own whith all the new stuff that comes out in the next few years.
Looks like the only real advantage at the moment is easier connection between mobo and drive and better airflow through the box. Do you really need it?

[chris watton]

SATA drives, by themselves are slightly faster than the IDE versions, but,, if you have 2 SATA drives and configure them to a RAID0 array, they are at least a third quicker, making this set up the best performance boost for your system.
Modern motherboards should support both SATA and IDE.(ALL motherboards support IDE drives)
I have the Asus A7N8X Delux, which does have an onboard RAID/SATA controller. I have both SATA in RAID0 (2x120GB Maxtor Plus 9 SATA hard drives), and 2x120GB Maxtor Plus 9 IDE drives on the secondary IDE channel (DVD/ROM and DVD/RW are on the primary IDE channel)
I can tell you that the SATAs are a LOT quicker than the IDE drives, without a doubt, and yes, you certainly can mix both SATA and IDE drives, as I have both in my system, and work fine (IDE drives are now for storage and backup)

[sjg]

SATA gives you a faster bus speed, it won't magically make the disks any faster. There isn't an IDE/ATA drive today that will saturate an ATA133 bus, let alone SATA.

The advantages are greater flexibility with more drives per channel and much thinner cables - both of which are pretty moot if you're going to put a disk in a PC and forget about it.

And RAID0 is a pretty ridiculous idea - consumer disks aren't the most reliable of things, the RAID controllers built into motherboards aren't very robust so you're sacrificing a lot of reliability for a minimal gain in performance. Want proper performance? Splash out the extra on SCSI or the "enterprise" 10k IDE disks from Western Digital. Taking bog-standard 7200rpm consumers disk and sticking them together with a £20 controller won't get you performance or reliability.

[chris watton]

Hmm, I beg to differ regarding the RAID0 being a silly idea. I did hold off for months as I thought the same, ie-no very reliable etc, but, I have to say, it has made quite a difference to my system. Furthurmore, manufactures are now including the higher end PCs with RAID0 set ups.
I use my PC for my business, so I do take both performance and reliability very seriously, as I would be in big trouble if I did lose my work!
Thus far, the RAID0 array has been perfect, it has made my fast PC a lot faster (especially certain CAD and rendering work), and, to be honest, through all my PC owning years, I have never once had a hard drive die on me!!

[pesty]

mmmmm interesting!

It seems I have 2 options going by whats been said...

1) keep the ata133 drive I have ordered not worth messing about to get 1 SATA

2)send it back and spend a little more getting 2 SATA drives.

Ill have to see if its easy to send it back and check my bank ballance.

Thanks for your help guys