Boot SATA with ATA HDs [Archive]

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scoots987

10-30-2005, 05:36 PM

I just bought a new Mobo and for the first time (for me) it has a SATA connection. Problem is all drives I have are only ATA. Is it worth it to buy a SATA drive for installing the OS and have the ATA drives as slaves? Or will that slow down the SATA?

Where's a good place for some deals for SATA drives?

Thanks

Midknyte

10-30-2005, 05:45 PM

SATA drives are independent of ATA. if you already have 7200rpm drives, you won't see that much diff unless you get a raptor or a 16MB cache drive.

Newegg or Zipzoomfly are reliable.

scoots987

10-30-2005, 05:53 PM

What's a Raptor? Or a 16MB Cache drive? Are those SCSI? I don't think I want to go SCSI just yet. Besides isn't SATA and SCSI getting pretty close for performance?

Thanks

Midknyte

10-30-2005, 06:00 PM

The western digitial raptor drive is 10k rpm. The maxtor diamondmax 10 has 16MB of hard drive cache. you can find reviews here:
www.storagereview.com

if you have a 7200rpm/8mb cache IDE drive, just going to a sata 7200/8mb cache drive will not give you a performance boost. bottomline, the interface does not make a big difference; there are other factors that affect hdd performance.

they are not scsi. scsi is completely different. no, scsi performance is better than SATA except for the Raptor.

Peter M

10-30-2005, 06:07 PM

Even the Raptor falls way behind the best of current SCSI offerings - even if you stick to 10k rpm SCSI drives.

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/suite_v4.php?typeID=10&testbedID=4&osID=6&raidconfigID=1&numDrives=1&devID_0=277&devID_1=264&devID_2=278&devID_3=267&devCnt=4

Imperion1

10-30-2005, 06:27 PM

Midknyte

10-30-2005, 06:35 PM

scoots987

10-30-2005, 08:07 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812107112

Just get a couple of these. Its alot cheaper than buying new hard drives.
They're convertors, they convert ATA drives to allow them to be able to plug into the SATA on motherboards.

Thanks for the suggestion. But why would spend the extra cash for SATA to have it converted to ATA?

Thanks

scoots987

10-30-2005, 08:19 PM

I have also been noticing that SATA comes in 150 and 300. Any comments on that?

Also my original question was for mixing ATA and SATA drives. What sense is that? Would booting off of a SATA make any difference on performance with ATA drives as slaves. Provided that I look at the Raptor or 16MB drives.

Thanks

Midknyte

10-30-2005, 09:19 PM

if you have a 7200rpm/8mb cache IDE drive, just going to a sata 7200/8mb cache drive will not give you a performance boost. bottomline, the interface does not make a big difference; there are other factors that affect hdd performance

NO. you will not gain anything by merely changing interface.

SATA150 vs 300 will give you negligible gain. It would help you if you are running multiple drives in a RAID array.

scoots987

10-30-2005, 10:21 PM

NO. you will not gain anything by merely changing interface.

SATA150 vs 300 will give you negligible gain. It would help you if you are running multiple drives in a RAID array.

Ok, I've done RAID before and see the advantages with that. I don't know if this is correct, but someone said to me that SATA is basically built-in RAID. Not sure what was ment by that. The whole thought behind RAID is to have two or more drives sharing resources to speed up through-put. Or splitting work and even mirroring. So the question is if SATA is "built-in" RAID then I don't have to worry about buying additional equipment to do a RAID?

Thanks

Midknyte

10-30-2005, 11:13 PM

SATA and RAID are mutually exclusive. you don't need to run RAID, but it should have the capability.

Peter M

10-31-2005, 06:23 AM

RAID is a drive-combining technology ABOVE the actual physical transport. You can have IDE RAID, SATA RAID, SCSI RAID, SAS RAID, FC RAID, or even RAID a mixture of any of those. It's all up to the RAID controller hard- or software that handles the joining of the physical drives on their respective interfaces, whatever those might be.

Imperion1

11-01-2005, 11:58 PM

The convertor I showed converts ATA drives to SATA.
And the convertor is alot cheaper than buying SATA drives.

And yes, you can boot off SATA and still have ATA drives installed. Just have to set the boot order up correctly in the Bios.

Strawbs

11-02-2005, 05:54 AM

another advantage of SATA is that the smaller cables are easier to manage & allow for better airflow within the case!

but if you intent on keeping your ATA drives you won't have that benefit.

Booting from SATA to install Windows is made trickier because you have to load the drivers seperately before Windows will see the drive\s - but once installed, it boots just the same.

Many will warn that RAID is not as strong as it might be and often breaks - losing data! I've run a SATA RAID for 20 month's now & despite many formats, BIOS flashes, partition re-aligns & general tinkering, I have not yet had to rebuild my striped array once in that time.

The odds of a failure must be catching up with me! :eek:

Excuse me while I back up to my ATA Drive. ;)

dajogejr

11-04-2005, 03:39 PM

Booting from SATA to install Windows is made trickier because you have to load the drivers seperately before Windows will see the drive\s - but once installed, it boots just the same.
)

Not neccessarily on newer boards, Strawbs. I helped a buddy of mine the other day...year old Abit board with a 754 in it.

No floppy needed to install Windows...unless you wanted to install it on a RAID array.
His raptor on it's own did not need the controller driver loaded (the ol' F6)...

Midknyte

11-04-2005, 03:55 PM

That's because they are using IDE emulation now. Just gotta check the bios settings to see what mode it is in.