Are SATA drives any louder than IDE drives? and other quest.

fanerman91 · Post by **fanerman91** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:10 am

1) Are they louder? I need more HD space.

2) Is SATA support on new motherboards practically standard now? (I'm getting a new mobo/cpu soon anyway)

3) How much faster are they than IDE?

4) Are they going to replace IDE? If I'm getting a new HD, should I might as well go with SATA?

5) Are Samsung and Seagate still the way to go with these things? I noticed a fairly high pitched whine with 2 Seagate 7200.7s I tried (and returned both. the first time I thought it was defective). I have a Barrucuda IV and V right now.

6) Has anybody noticed any such whine with either Samsung or Seagate SATAs?

7) I have 2 IDE HDs now... will getting a SATA HD allow me to run 3 HDs and 2 optical drives (ignoring power issues I hope... I imagine Seasonic 460 watts is enough)? Right now I seem to be limited to 4 disk drives.

Thanks.

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:27 am

1) Not as far as I know; SATA/PATA and noise should be unrelated issues. SATA cables are great for airflow though;

2) Yes, but not all boards have it so check before you buy. Also, there is a great difference in the number of SATA connectors (many boards have only 2 meaning 2 devices);

3) For a single disc: not at all. The only thing that's faster is the connection between controller and disc, but that is like driving the same car on a wider road: won't go any faster. Multiple discs on SATA will be slightly faster than master/slave PATA sets though but even that difference will be small. I've read that SATA controllers have less cpu overhead but I have never been able to confirm this;

4) Yes, definitely;

5) AFAIK based on what I've read here: yes. Others here know more about this though;

6) no experiences with recent models, only 80Gb 'cuda IVs;

7) Yes, as long as the board has (at least) 3 SATA ports. our PSU will be able to handle that.

lm · Post by lm » Mon Nov 15, 2004 4:35 am

3) Afaik the SATA drive can begin a data transfer by itself instead of waiting for the cpu to ask for the data, and some disks and controllers support native command queueing which also increases performance.

5) I am happy with my 7200.7 80GB SATA. The seek is audible tho, unlike in my barracuda IV.

6) Mine doesn't whine.

kesv · Post by **kesv** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:29 am

lm wrote:3) Afaik the SATA drive can begin a data transfer by itself instead of waiting for the cpu to ask for the data

Quess what UDMA does for PATA drives ?

DMA - direct memory access.