to sata, or not to sata

[TdC]

heya boys and girls, just a quick question or two:

I wish to purchase a larger harddrive for my gaming poota, and I've been looking at the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 250GB model. Now here are my queries...

-the only reason I'm looking at the 250GB and greater DM10 models is because they have the 16MB buffer. Is the larger buffer worth it? I currently have 8MB buffered drives and they seem to work just fine tbh.

-the new-fangled sata lark or the tried and trusted pata? the DM10/250GB is available in both versions. I have an Asus A7N8X deluxe rev 1.3 mobo, which has sata and pata interfaces but I don't know too much about sata tbh. Can I boot off a sata disk without problems? Will windows (it's my gaming rig) bitch about the sata drive? Is sata worth getting performance-wise?

do tell please

 

[Clown]

They're about the same price as IDE drives now, but the cables are much nicer

 

[Jonty]

Hey TdC

Having never had SATA nor even read that much about it, I can only make obvious observations.

Having a 16MB buffer would be nice, but as with many such things you may at times need a benchmarking utility to really notice the difference. 8MB is as you say the norm on many newer drives which previously had 2MB. Without reading reviews etc. I wouldn't know whether the 16MB buffer is worth it, so I'll hedge my bets and say if it's not much more money then go for it, but if it is a lot more expensive stick with 8MB.

SATA itself probably is worth going for if your motherboard supports it. The drives, as Clown says, aren't particularly more expensive than the traditional PATA variants, but they offer more versatility, being a newer spec. One of the big non-performance advantages are the small cables, replacing PATA's large ribbons. This is great news for airflow inside your system, particularly useful if you're running a small form factor or BTX system.

SATA compatibility is, as far as I'm aware, very good in the Windows world now. I've heard something about Windows' DOS-based install not liking SATA drives, but I don't think it's anything which cannot be remedied. Again, I'm hesitant as I don't know too much about this, nor about Linux support (I believe the newer versions support SATA).

Just one thing to consider is that SATA II is due out this year. Whilst I wouldn't let it put you off buying a SATA drive now, the longer you leave it the more you may wish to consider a SATA II drive, if they surface with a reasonable price tag (I'm not sure if a new motherboard would be required).

SATA II offers 300Mpbs throughput (around twice the bandwidth of SATA) and offers Native Command Queuing which 're-orders read commands so they fit with the sequential position of the required data on the disk' (NCQ may be available in a fashion without SATA II). Apparently the SATA II spec. also supports external devices, hot-swapping and hub arrangements (four devices on one controller etc.) thus meaning it could spread to FireWire and USB style devices and not just hard-drives, so I'm informed (thanks to PC Format for this info.).

Kind Regards

 

[TdC]

hmm. I'll get one tonight for the hell of it and see

 

[Vae]

One thing to bear in mind is that if you are doing a fresh install of windows onto the new HDD then you'll need some way of loading the Sata drivers during boot-up (The bios will prompt you to load the drivers as it probably does at the moment during start-up). You'll either need them on a floppy disk or you'll need to create a WinXP cd with the Sata drivers slipstreamed into it (See Microsofts website for details of slipstreaming).

Also remember to set the Sata drive to SCSI in the bios on that motherboard, enable the SCSI as the first boot device if booting from it and also to enable the Check for Sata devices in the bios - someone else on here had a problem because they'd disabled the check for Sata devices to speed up boot-up and were then wondering why it wasn't finding their sata device on boot-up

 

[PLightstar]

Had the same thing with my new Sata drive without a pata to boot from first xp has problems but in the end I used the mobo cd to create a sata driver disk for initial set-up when installing windows.

But I prefer Sata they look nicer in my case and make less noise, compared to my old pata drive, which from day one used to make a lot of noise.

 

[sibanac]

TDc, sata is faster then pata.
If you got a controller go sata
Sata also seems much less cpu intensive then pATA, tho this might just be a figment of my imagination.

btw linux suports sata better then windows ( most distro's install without needing any silly driver disks and so)
havent tested bsd yet tho

 

[Tom]

Sata cables give you a hell of a lot more room inside your case to muck around. Do it, although pay attention to Vae's post, because that can be a reet bitch.

 

[Ch3tan]

All this talk of enabling chedks for sata and drivers for installing windows -I did none of this and the bios and windows found everything perfectly.

 

[Tom]

Thats because you used a haxx3d version of the windows install disc

 

[Ch3tan]

Nope, straight off the original cd. You guys just suck.

 

[Clown]

I had to hack my SATA floppy drivers to make them work with my version of Windows. I deleted random things. It seemed to work.

 

[PLightstar]

I had to hack my SATA floppy drivers to make them work with my version of Windows. I deleted random things. It seemed to work.

I like that, 'delete random things'

 

[Escape]

The Diamondmax 10 drives support NCQ.
Whether or not you'll need sata drivers during a windows installation, depends on your mtherboard. And the same with enabling/disabling scsi. I'm using the same hardrives(on an NF4-Ultra mobo) and didn't need to use a floppy. Also I needed to disable scsi in the bios. Just change settings until it works

There's no reason not to buy SATA if your mobo supports it. Besides, SATA power connectors are worth upgrading for alone. I hate the 4pin molex connectors which get stuck in your drives

btw, I have 2x 300G drives and both make horrid crunching sounds when seeking. If noise is a factor, avoid the Diamondmax 10s...

 

[Ardrias]

I've got a pair of Seagate 7200.7, 200GB. They're nice and quiet. Not as fast as the Maxtors tho I suppose, but hey.
Read somewhere where they tested the current generation of NCQ drives and they actually performed worse....

 

[TdC]

I suppose I shall need drivers then (not that it matters) as my mobo seems to be about the oldest NF2 mobo there is