is SATAII worth it yet?

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Vulcanworlds

Limp Gawd
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Aug 28, 2005
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ok well i bought a SATA2 seagate 320gb drive the other day (being shipped now) and im wondering if the SATA2 technology has improved at all to where i'd see a preformance increase from sata1 to sata2

now the reason im asking this is because my motherboard is set at SATA150, but i could mod it to support sata2. but why should i mod it if it won't give me a preformance boost at all?
 
Interface speed is almost never a limiting factor in anything but burst performance.

The fastest drives out there will barely be limited by Ultra66 IDE in sustained throughput, much less SATA1 or 2.

Your burst speed might be affected, but that really dosn't matter much.

I would just run it a 150 and be happy with it. (I am running my 160GB Raptor at 150 and it is fast)

==>Lazn
 
The poster above me speaks words of wisdom. Think about the difference in SATA to SATAII as the difference in AGP to PCIex16. In theory you can get a lot faster, but in reality, nothing takes advantage of it and nothing will for a very long time.
 
how can you mod it to SATAII unless you change the northbridge or southbridge chipset ?
 
Lazn_Work said:
Interface speed is almost never a limiting factor in anything but burst performance.

The fastest drives out there will barely be limited by Ultra66 IDE in sustained throughput, much less SATA1 or 2.
Click to expand...

that raptor you have has a transfer rate of > 66MB/s, but still much less than 150MB/s
 
drizzt81 said:
that raptor you have has a transfer rate of > 66MB/s, but still much less than 150MB/s
Click to expand...

True, I see sustained transfers over 80 and pushing 90 MB/s, but still, most 7200rpm drives are closer to 70 at best and that is not much over the 66 of the old Utra IDE.

==>Lazn
 
@Lazn_Work thank you for explaining that to me. i'm just going to stick at sata150
@00ber_m00 thanks for the analogy i see now


another question i have is how do you guys think i should setup my new installation (should i even reinstall?) and stuff with this new drive.

i will have 160gb + 320gb (roughly) and my 160gb is all but 8gb full (movies music games)

what are some reccomended partitionings (if any) and backup type of things i could possible have.

for instance is there anyway to have my main 'system' be installed on the 320gb and then somehow mirrored/backed up onto the 160gb. also is there anyway to somehow like mirror everything i have on the 160gb onto the 320gb then wipe the 160 clean (or leave it) so i dont have to reinstall everything (though a good fresh reinstall of xp/games might help out and stuff)

so please, share your ideas.
 
There are plenty of drive cloning tools out there, from free ones on the UBCD to the most popular one you have to purchase (Ghost).

If your install is running well and doesn't need a reinstall, I would clone your old drive to the new one, expanding the partition in the process. If a reinstall might help things, I would reinstall to the new drive. (keep the old drive unplugged durring the install to prevent issues)

==>Lazn
 
Vulcanworlds said:
well i don't plan on doing the mod since i will not be seeing any real world increase in preformance but here is the link to the mod's (it's a dfi)
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11400&highlight=nf4-d+mod

i will look into the various hard drive cloning programs, do you have any recommended ones? and do you know if these will let me increase the partition size?
Click to expand...

Most will let you increase the partition size at the same time. I would just use the UBCD: http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

Several of the HD MFG tools have similar utilities for download too. (but they only work copying to their brand of HD)

==>Lazn
 
i know this question seems stupid but im sorry, there is a linux version and a window version of the ubcd now you have linked me to the linux version so can that one be used for what i need? or do i need the windows one?

thanks a bunch man.
 
I have never used the windows version. (did not even know there was one)

But either version should work fine if they have a cloning utility that you can figure out how to use.

==>Lazn
 
well the new drive got here today, it's big and heavy!

anyways UBCD is in the process of downloading right now but i was wondering what process i should go about doing with installing this drive. Should i plug it in as just another drive, boot into XP and then format it as NTFS, then reboot and boot from the ubcd, and run one of the hard drive cloning programs?

or will those format it for me as well?

i might just go ahead and format it in windows as NTFS then reboot and do the cloning stuff.
 
ok so it's plugged in right now and im in windows (haven't cloned yet) and in the manage part of my computer the drive shows up and is suppoisvely working properly.

but the drive does not show up in windows.

looking at the seagate site it seems i should have run a program or 2 before i installed the drive, should i be worried about runnign them and stuf, since both drive are seagate, i just don't want to loose my data right now as im setting up a new drive.

i think i will try shutting down, un plugging the new drive, run the seagate drive wizard and t hen go from there.
 
While I of course agree with the general interface speed argument, reality has a tendency to be strange, so I wouldn't translate the general interface speed argument as a negative bias against SATA 3.0 Gb/s.

In fact, I have (among many others) a pair of 300 GB Maxtor SATA 1.5 Gb/s drives, and a pair of 300 GB Maxtor SATA 3.0 Gb/s drives in the same system, and the 3.0 Gb/s drives consistently bench a little better in STR.

Why? Dunno. Doesn't matter. The point is that in some cases, reality, firmware development, whatever, make the newer SATA 3.0 Gb/s drives a bit faster than the 1.5 Gb/s versions in the same family. And I'd have to say that the opposite may be true as well.

So theory = good. Real measurements of performance = better.
 
You do not need to run the seagate software. (in fact, I would not run it)

Read the sticky.. you need to go to disk managment and create a partition on it before windows will see it. But if you are going to clone you old drive to it, you do not even need to do that. (but it would not be a bad idea to test it in windows first to make sure it works)

==>Lazn
 
sweet, well i used that UBCD (thanks for showing that to me) and first cloned the existing drive to the 320, then resized the partition to the full size of the drive. i had debated on whether or not to make separate partitions have have just my windows and games installed on 1 partition and have movies and music on the other, but i saw no good enough reason to, if someone has a valid point to it then i might consider it but i was thinking of just having everything installed on the 320, and then when i need more room or something install stuff on the 160.

how important is organization with hard drives? i mean all my music is consolidated and my movies are as well, but that's about it.

also backups, should i bother, honestly there isn't much data on there that i couldn't get back one way or another. the only things that i'd be mad if i lost were my oblivion save files, and maybe some school documents.

i mean this is new technology, it most likely wouldn't fail easily? or would it? btw this drive isn't that hot, it's like 32C idle, 35C load.
 
First off, backup important things, no matter how good a drive is, there is no replacement for backup. (if it is not a ton of important stuff, consider just throwing a CDR at it every Friday.. they are cheap and it is easy enough to do)

Second, organization is only for your needs, the comptuer doesn't care. So as long as you can find what you are looking for, don't worry about it. Partitions don't affect performance much. (technically, partitions on the outside of the disk are faster than ones on the inside etc. but if you are using both partitions then it doesn't really help much) So I would not bother with partitions if you can organize with folders.

==>Lazn
 
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