Serial ATA150 Power

[Whitebread]

Do Serial ATA150 HDDs use the same 4 pin power molex connector that older EIDE drives use? I'll be getting this drive tonight.

Also, what is the difference between Serial ATA150 and SATA 3.0Gb/s? Is one just faster than the other?

 

[Whitebread]

I answered my own question about SATA 3.0Gb/s and SATA150. Wouldn't SATA 3.0gb/s be completely useless on a PCI controller card? PCI can't handle 266MB/s transfer rates, correct?

 

[Whitebread]

Anyone?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Also featured on the new WD Caviar SE SATA hard drives is Western Digital's FlexPowerTM technology that accepts a power connection from either the traditional EIDE power connectors - found in virtually all of today's desktop systems - or other currently shipping SATA power supplies.

So you're okay on the power issue. And yes, a standard pci bus doesn't take advantage of the full speed of SATA. A 3.0gbps connection, with 8/10b coding, means 300 megabytes per second. That's about twice as fast as the (standard) pci bus, at 133 mb/s. However, pci-X can go up to 133 mHz at 64 bits (compared to 33 mHz and 32 bits), for a total of 1 GB/s. That's plenty of overhead there.

Not to mention that a 3gbps drive won't actually hit anything like 3gbps - more like 600 mbps. Modern drives still aren't anywhere near interface transfer rates.

 

[Whitebread]

O wonderful, thank you.