There is nothing wrong with a PATA right ?

L

leoftw

Gawd
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Apr 6, 2007
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I have a 320GB harddrive that works great for me. There is nothing wrong with it but I see everyone going with SATA . I only got it because it was on sale for 50$ and I couldn't pass that deal up . What are the advantages of SATA other than looks ?
 
Well it hooks up different first of all. Each Sata has its own connector so you don't have to get involved with those parallel (the "P" in PATA) ribbons and the jumpers you have to move when having more than one drive on a ribbon. They are faster, quieter and more efficient now too. But a PATA drive is ok for general stuff like storage, web etc. I think. I still have them on older PC's and in external drives. They can't compare to my new SATA WD 750 GB AAKS (quiet and fast) but using the old ones dont make me feel like I am on an antique the way my Pentium IV 1.8 cpu does. Now that thing sux.
 
faster yes and no, but i think seagate sells it's perp drive in PATA, so no, not faster

Sometimes newer but if it is a newer 320g drive PATAm it is as fast as a SATA 320g drive of the same maker,
 
The major difference for me is that you can write to two sata drives at once with out a severe impact on performance unlike pata drives.
 
Modern motherboards only come with one IDE channel, so you're flat out of luck if you want a PATA hard drive and IDE optical drive, unless you really want them on the same channel.
 
SATA advantages:
  • thinner cables
  • hot swappable, requires driver support
  • faster burst speeds (though that has no to little real-world benefit)
  • Port-multiplier support (if implemented)

I have not read any studies on SATA being the reason for faster, quieter or more efficient drives. Newer drives are generally faster, but that is more closely related to internal improvements, rather than the interface. I'd love to read some studies about the power efficiency (bits per Watt) of both PATA vs. SATA signaling and the interface chips.

For drives sustaining more than ~120MiB/s, the PATA interface would be a bottleneck, 300MiB/s SATA has a benefit at that point.
 
drizzt81 said:
SATA advantages:
  • thinner cables
  • hot swappable, requires driver support
  • faster burst speeds (though that has no to little real-world benefit)
  • Port-multiplier support (if implemented)

I have not read any studies on SATA being the reason for faster, quieter or more efficient drives. Newer drives are generally faster, but that is more closely related to internal improvements, rather than the interface. I'd love to read some studies about the power efficiency (bits per Watt) of both PATA vs. SATA signaling and the interface chips.

For drives sustaining more than ~120MiB/s, the PATA interface would be a bottleneck, 300MiB/s SATA has a benefit at that point.
Click to expand...

Well, we already know the WD10EACS uses a whole lot less power than the rest, but it would be an interesting read regardless.
 
protias said:
Well, we already know the WD10EACS uses a whole lot less power than the rest, but it would be an interesting read regardless.
Click to expand...

Yes, but is that due to it being a SATA drive or rather due to ``WD's IntelliSeek™, IntelliPark™, and IntelliPower™ technologies''?

I am a big fan of SATA drives, since I absolutely love the hot-plug feature, however I don't think people should attribute things to the interface that are not related to it at all. The marketing machinery is already working at its best spreading misinformation.
 
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