Which Hard Drive?

mac1

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Hi all
I was wondering what is the difference between a IDE and SATA hard drive.
Do they have different connections or what?

in your opinion which is the best type to go for as I am going to build a AMD64 bit computer when Windows64 comes out next year.

or is there a better choice?

here are two examples that I can get at my local supplier.

IDE Seagate/Western Digital 200GB 7200 8MB Buffer - £72.99

SATA Maxtor 200GB - £75.99

thanks in advance for any comments
see ya
mac
 
definately go for the SATA drive.

the reason i chose sata is because its faster. also IDE is getting kinda old, intel is doing their best to phase out IDE drives!

as for the connections, yes they are different;

sata uses thinner data cables which doesnt restrict airflow as much as IDE cables,
BTW sata also uses a different type of power cable, if you have a new powersupply you dont need to worry, if ur PS is old then you can just buy a SATA power adapter available at your local store. they only cost like a dollar or so!

FYI there are already plans on a new generation of sata drives, ie SATA2, just gives you an idea of how old IDE drives are gettin ;)

So whatever you do go for SATA! you wont be dissapointed.......
 
The drives themselves are pretty much the same, but as mensioned, the connectors and cables are different. The interface is also faster, but that only shows during bursts as the drives are much slower anyway.

But yes, go for SATA.
 
As a sort of aside - IMHO there will still be plenty of life left in ATA drives (it is slightly misleading maybe to call them IDE - that is the cable I think).

You should be prepared that with SATA there will be more "effort" in the initial configuration of the drives etc. The SATA drivers are often associated with RAID configurations and you probably will have to hit f6 during formatting to add extra required drivers.

Sooooo my PERSONAL recommendation would be to have at least one ATA drive as a fall back/compatibility drive (by all means make this a budget one) and then from there on you could invest in SATA for all future drives. Speed gains do not really come until SATA2. Make sure your mobo has SATA support of course (although adaptors are available it gets a little clumsy maybe). Needless to say I have taken my own advice ;)
 
SATA only needs extra drivers if they are connected to a non-chipset controller, which was common when SATA just came out. But if he wants to build an AMD64 system it's a native and needs no drivers. There will be no difference from PATA drives (more clarifying than "ATA" if you don't like "IDE") except for the cables and the fact that SATA doesn't need master/slave jumper configuration.

I see no reason not to go with SATA in this case.

Plus if he waits til next year he can get a SATA2 board and drives with NCQ support (it's really ncq that makes the difference, the drives are still slower than the interface for sustained transfer).
 
It seems you all recommend the SATA drive.

Zedric wrote: Plus if he waits till next year he can get a SATA2 board and drives with NCQ support (it's really ncq that makes the difference, the drives are still slower than the interface for sustained transfer).

Please can you explain the advantage of this board "SATA2" and whats NCQ support, will it work better with Windows 64bit than a ordinary M/B.

good link Chaos949, seems to have good advice at a glance, will have to read more.

thanks again all
mac
 
mac1 said:
Zedric wrote: Plus if he waits till next year he can get a SATA2 board and drives with NCQ support (it's really ncq that makes the difference, the drives are still slower than the interface for sustained transfer).

Please can you explain the advantage of this board "SATA2" and whats NCQ support, will it work better with Windows 64bit than a ordinary M/B.
SATA2 is basically the next generation SATA interface. SATA has a throughput of 150 MB/s and SATA2 has 300 MB/s. With that said, a common hard disk won't be able to produce more than 50-60 MB/s in sustained transfer. In small bursts however, the speed is higher.

NCQ is Native Commend Queuing. This means that commands sent to the drive (reading, writing) can be resorted depending on where on the disk the target is. This means that the drive can choose to read/write data close to eachother first, before moving the arm to read/write data further away instead of reading som, moving, reading and then moving back again to read (which obviously takes more time). The bottom line is that the drive will be faster in general use (many small reads/writes) because of the command sorting, but still as slow when it comes to sustained transfer.

Here's an article that explains it in detail:
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=431&Itemid=0

This really has nothing to do with Windows 64 or 64 bits in any way. It's just faster technology, but it will be faster on Windows 64 too. Right now it looks like the nForce4 chipsets will be the first to support SATA2. If any other chipsets or controllers support NCQ yet, I don't know, but nForce4 will. I haven't seen any drives with SATA2 support yet. But a normal SATA drive should work with a SATA2 motherboard, just at SATA speeds.

Hope it helped! :)
 
Thanks Zedric
that's exactly what i wanted to know, I think I would be wise to wait till the SATA2 M/Boards come out next year, then get one and also a SATA H/D, seeing I have to wait till Windows 64Bit comes out.

thanks again, great advice.
mac
 
you can wait but expect to pay a huge premium for the new drives, I remember when sata first came out, a sata drive used to cost almost double a ata drive!
 

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