SATA vs ATA

[kethwika]

I am thinking of running 4 serial ata hard drives on my system but im not sure if i want
to run RAID because if one of the hard drives fail then they all fail. And the chances one
1 or more of the 4 screwing up are high in my opinion.

So i was wondering if theres is a way i can run 4 sata hard drives without raid or should i just go
for normal ata hard drives. and i if i do the latter, is there a motherboard that can support
4 ata hard drives?

any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

[Ice Czar]

that of course is only true for RAID level 0 (striped)
the other RAID levels actually provide the R in RAID
redundancy
striping should be called AID

most RAID cards will support JBOD there are a few drawbacks though
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod-c.html
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-08-1999/swol-08-raid3.html

there are plenty of Host Adapters however
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=98&familyId=3
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/satacard.htm

investing in SATA offers a better upgrade path,
gives you a slight increase in efficiency if not performance
and a huge increase in data integrity

SATA and the 7 Deadly Sins of Parallel ATA
ATA Not So Frequently Asked Questions

and of course there are advantages available in assorted SATA HDDs unavailable in their PATA counterparts, Like 10,000rpm Raptors or the Seagate 7200.7 which supports NCQ

think you might want to review these

As the HDD Disk Spins whole series and RAID section

SR\PC Guide RAID Section

Advanced HDD Issues > RAID section