Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Coming of Serial ATA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the faster-is-better dept.

GrendelT writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the newest Serial ATA gadgets that are soon to hit the market. With speeds of 150Mb/s, thinner and longer cables, backwards compatibilty with Parallel ATA (what most of us have right now), and the option of being hot-pluggable, it seems the next step in storage technology is upon us."

3 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IEEE 1394? by Chmarr · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's what I originally thought, too. But the story title is a typo: They're talking about 150MegaBytes/sec, not bits.

    The next version of firewire on the horizon will only be able to do 100Megabytes/sec (800Megabits/sec).

    Still, I'd much rather they dump Serial ATA altogether and concentrate on FireWire. 100Megabytes/sec is just plenty, and FireWire is a much more general and flexible standard.

  2. Article seems fluffy by linuxhack · · Score: 5, Funny
    Parallel data transfer (sending data along a number of parallel routes) has always meant a large number of wires and high frequency signals prone to electrical interference.
    Huh? I thought serial connections used higher frequencies to make up for the fewer data channels.
    In short: connecting more than one device to a ribbon cable is a job we wouldn't wish upon our worst enemy.
    Err, yeah... I managed to get my Athlon XP installed and attached the heat-sink without crushing the core, but man was I unprepared for the hell that involved plugging in those IDE cables!
    Serial ATA Controller: PCI Only
    Damnit! Those basdards are always forcing us to upgrade! Change one part and you need a whole new motherboard! I have all these extra ISA alots and I can't use them? OK, so now I'm just being silly...
  3. Don't use rounded IDE cables. by rogerwong · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just say no to round ATA133 cables. Every other wire on an 80-wire IDE cable is a ground. It's there to shield the data wires from one another.

    When you bunch the individual wires up like that, you destroy the shielding. At high data transfer speed, you are going to get CRC errors due to interference, and this means lower performance as the IDE controller has to deal with them.

    Rounded cables are suitable for low speed applications like CDROM and floppy drives.