Slashdot Mirror
Serial ATA, Here and Now
Xev writes "We have heard a lot about this new technology; over at HEXUS.net they have a review of a retail drive. The first on the internet, it is interesting to see the performance of the unit as well as the hotswap feature, and other new functions. Is this a solution to cheaper hot swap?"
I had the chance to use these recently and they are definately far better !
How much of a killer-feature is this? Other than thinner cables, why move to SATA?
Oh yeah, and in Soviet Russia, your hard drive hotswaps YOU!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
is serial ATA drives that will swap into My portable music player, My PDA and My desktop and laptop computers. Or, to be more exact, I want all of thos different pieces of hardware to HAVE serial ATA functionality... THEN I will be content.
Is it just me, or were the first several pages of this "article" written by cutting and pasting directly from Seagate's own product description and SATA white papers?
That they then split the article out over a zillion "pages" to pump up their ad impression numbers is insult on top of injury.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Site died as I was reading... We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this ;) /.ed in under 5 minutes...
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
from page:
;)"
;)
"We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this
The problem being, the network death known as a "slashdotting"
Something is up? Thats a nice way of saying their server is dying under the load of thousands of geeks.
maybe they should be runnign some serial ATA hard drives.
I hope Google has a cache...
"I drank what?" - Socrates
We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this ;)
Server bashing aside, how does serial ATA compare with SCSI as far as overhead, connection (daisy chain, bus, etc..)?
Join the TWIT army now!
Click here to print review
Review Title: Seagate ST380023AS Hard Drive
Reviewer: Simon Maltby
Date of Review: 30th December 2002
Sample Provided by Seagate
Introduction to SATA
Seagate UK kindly have supplied us with one of their new Serial ATA hard drives. We take a look at the new SATA format and attempt to determine what the new format means in real life. Will SATA produce any real improvement in performance?
Before we begin looking at the physical drive it is worth reading a little about the SATA format. The following extract from Seagate's web site provides us with an insight into the serial ATA standard and more importantly it's expected development path.
About the Serial ATA (SATA) format
Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connect, since the 1980\'s (over 15 years!). Today\'s PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent this bus from providing higher speeds of data transfers. The move to a new technology is inevitable in the eyes of industry leaders such as Intel, Dell, Seagate, Maxtor and APT.
These same leaders formed the SerialATA.org and are highly dedicated to bringing this new technology to the forefront of today\'s PCs. Serial ATA is designed to overcome the limitations of parallel ATA while providing scalability for years to come. Setting the goal to be compatible and at cost parity with current parallel ATA drives when in volume, the SerialATA organization is promoting the adoption of Serial ATA in all systems where ATA drives are being used today.
Serial ATA... the future?
What is Serial ATA?
Serial ATA is a \"serial\" architecture as opposed to today\'s \"parallel\" ATA internal disc drive bus. Serial ATA wraps many bits of data into a packet and then at a higher speed (up to 50% higher) than parallel, transfers the packet of data down the wire to or from the host. Today Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is performed on the data being transmitted back and forth but not on the commands. Serial ATA integrates CRC on the command and data packet level for enhanced bus reliability. Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors. A Serial ATA drive can transfer data at 150MB/sec on the bus to the host system with extremely reliable accuracy and the Serial ATA interface will continue to allow scalability for a very long time.
Generation 1 Generation 2 Generation 3
Approximate Data Rate 150mb/sec 300mb/sec 600mb/sec
Approximate Bus Speed 1.5gb/sec 4gb/sec 6gb/sec
Approximate Introduction Fall of \'02 Mid \'04 Mid \'07
Additional Benefits
In addition to a faster, more reliable bus, Serial ATA improves cabling and connectors for a robust yet simpler integration. Gone are the days of bent pins and clumsy cabling and needless returned hard drives. Serial ATA cables are thinner and longer for improved system airflow and innovative system designs such as small form factor and consumer electronic boxes. Connectors are easier to snap into place without any pins but rather a blind-mate type of connection. Without the wide cables, system integrators can easily route the longer data cables (1 meter) within the system for simplicity or innovative designs.
Seagate Technology, A Native in Serial ATA Still in its early market entry stage, Serial ATA provides immediate benefits to desktop users. Serial ATA, an innovative new interface, allows continued performance growth, enhanced data reliability, and overall improved system dynamics above and beyond what Parallel can efficiently continue to provide.
A true \"Native\" Serial ATA solution offers customers the \"Real McCoy\" in Serial ATA technology. By implementing Serial ATA technology, not only on the physical layer of the drive, but also in the ATA controller link and transport layers, Seagate drives can communicate from the drive to the host directly up to the full 150MB/sec speed on the bus. In addition, the native solution incorporates command queuing, which can be a big performance boost in operating systems that can take advantage of that type of function. Some drive manufacturers may not immediately offer these \"native\" Serial ATA features on their 1st generation Serial ATA drives due to the difficulty of this integration.
The Test Drive I
The drive it\'s self looks just like any other computer hard disk drive. Consistent with other Seagate barracuda drives this one is very well built, solid and as attractive as a rectangular box of metal and plastic can be. The label clearly identifies the drive and provides setup information.
Review Model Seagate ST380023AS
Size 80gb
Speed 7,200rpm
Seek Time (Average) 9ms
Interface Serial ATA
Here is the description of the drive from Seagate\'s web site...
Seagate\'s Barracuda ATA V with Serial ATA Interface leverages the mechanics of the industry\'s quietest 7200 rpm desktop drive. The Barracuda ATA V offers 80GB and 120GB capacities with an 8MB cache for mainstream, high performance PCs, and entry-level servers. The product features all FDB motors, superior reliability and the next generation interface - Serial ATA. The SATA Barracuda includes Seagate\'s exclusive 3D Defense System and a one-year limited warranty.
Features Benefits
7,200 RPM desktop performance Improves overall PC performance
350 Gs nonoperating shock Protects drive from shock and vibration
3D Defense System Industry\'s most comprehensive drive and data protection system
DiscWizard software World\'s best disc installation software utility
SoftSonic(TM) FDB motor Quietest acoustics on any desktop drive
8-Mbyte cache buffer Improved performance
Serial ATA interface Fastest data transfer rates
The Test Drive II
SATA drives can not be connected to your computer with the standard IDE and Molex power connectors as becomes clear when viewing the back of the drive. Two new interfaces are need to use the drive. If you have a motherboard with serial ATA support you will have probably been supplied with an SATA data cable as shown below. However you will also need a Molex to SATA power conversion lead which is not supplied with either the motherboard or hard drive. I can foresee this power lead becoming a source of frustration for many people ordering SATA drives, hopefully when the drives hit the retail market the cable will be supplied with the hard drive.
Connecting the drive is very easy indeed. The SATA connectors are very well designed and will only fit the correct way round. There are no pins to bend or break as the fittings are more like USB than IDE.
Currently motherboards with SATA connectors run via the PCI bus. Some have connection via a SATA RAID controller, but our test board used a single SATA connector which is linked to a stand alone SATA controller chip. Once installed and booted the drive was displayed in the Bios taking the place of the primary IDE device. Windows XP located the drive as new hardware and the drive was fully visible. The Seagate drive is fully SMART enabled. This gives access to drive monitoring information including temperature.
Benchmarks I
Test Setup
* DFI NB80-EA Granite Bay motherboard
* P4 2.66Mhz CPU, 512MB DDR3500 RAM
* Seagate 80GB SATA150 Hard Disk Drive
* Maxtor 120GB 8MB ATA133 Cache Hard Drive on IDE
* Maxtor 60GB 2MB ATA100 Cache Hard Drive
* 2 Weston Digital 80GB 8MB Cache drives on Promise Raid Controller on Raid0
* Speedfan utility for SMART monitoring including hard drive temperature
HD Tech - Read Results Graph
The HD Tech benchmark is recognised as the most comprehensive hard drive test available. The benchmark evaluates the Hard drives performance across the whole drive regardless of how the drive is partitioned. It is common for performance to drop the further into the drive the test goes. This is due to the sectors at the end of the disk being physically further from the drives starting point.
Seagate SATA ATA150
Maxtor ATA133
The graphs above show two interesting trends. Although the computer was able to read information from the Maxtor drive faster than the Seagate drive, the opposite is true when it comes to writing data. The Seagate drive shows a consistent write speed with a few downward troughs, where as the Maxtor drive shows a few peaks in performance. Secondly although both drives show the expected reduction in read speed the further into the drive the test goes, the Seagate drive shows a slower decline dropping from circa 40k to 25k. The Maxtor drops more steeply from 50k down to 25k.
The graphs below show the results of all the HD Tech tests carried out during the review. As the benchmark requires unpartitioned drives to test writing speeds only two drives were able to be tested, the Seagate SATA and the Maxtor 120GB 8MB Cache.
Read speed average results
Write speed average results
The Seagate SATA drive did not perform as well as we had hoped in the read tests. Performance was lower than the other 8MB Cache drives whether in a raid configuration or straight forward IDE. The drive is far from being slow, but with the same 8MB Cache and the equivalent of ATA150 transfer speeds we hoped for more. Despite the average scores showing lower the Seagate drive did display better consistency across the drive as a whole and also proved significantly better in the write tests, some 30% better than the Maxtor.
Benchmarks II
Sandra Benchmark
The Sandra benchmark is less reliable than the HD Tech because it tests a partition rather than the whole drive and as we have seen performance changes depending on where on the drive the partition is located. When testing for the review we ensured that all the test drives had the same sized partition and that it was at the start of the physical disk.
The results show the same story as HD tech, although we are unable to break down the Sandra scores to establish where the Seagate drive falls down.
General Usage
Hot Swapping
An interesting attribute associated with SATA devices is that they should be \'Hot Swappable\', that means that you should be able to move devices around while your operating system is running. On the face of it this would be very useful. Care must be taken when moving hard disks around because while the internal discs are spinning damage can be caused easily. With the SATA drive installed as a non system disk we were able to disconnect the drive with windows XP running. Unlike USB device when removed, windows did not realise that the drive was no longer connected and it remained visible!
Noise
Seagate have produced a very well built drive in the ST380023AS. The casing is very solid and the mechanism well balanced. As a result it is most defiantly the quietest hard disk drive I have ever used. If you are looking for an ultra quiet drive then this one should be on your shopping list.
Reliability
The test drive was run continually for a week cycling the Sandra benchmark. Although the drive can get quite hot, rising to 45c under very heavy load, it performed without fault. SMART monitoring did not detect any problems during our testing. It should be remembered that a weeks hard testing does not give any real indication of the drives long term reliability, but we can take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the IDE Barracuda drives have proven to be one of the most reliable in the market thus far.
Price
Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT. This puts a small premium on the SATA format.
Conclusion
The read performance of the Seagate ST380023AS was not as good as we had hoped for. On the other hand write performance was better than we hoped for. In summary one fact is clear, the SATA interface works differently to the IDE interface and when you consider that this is a first generation SATA drive, linked to a motherboard that has the SATA interface located on the PCI bus, limiting it's potential, the overall performance is very good indeed.
The benefits of ultra fast data writing would make this drive ideal for write hungry tasks like video rendering or data backup. The Seagate drive itself is very well made and seems to be very robust. Its quiet operation makes it ideal for inclusion in a system where quietness is of benefit.
Serial ATA is in its infancy. Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received. I for one will be very sorry to have to part with this drive when Seagate ask for it back.
Pros
* Very Quiet
* Robust
* Very fast write performance
* Simple SATA data cable connection
Cons
* Needs power adapter (Not supplied)
* Slower read performance than expected
* SATA comes at a price premium
Serial ATA is BS. Why create a new standard? We currently have:
IDE (133mbit, a hack; but works well)
SCSI (160mbit)
USB 2.0 (480mbit, again, a functional hack)
firewire (400mbit).
Both USB 2.0 AND firewire exceed the IO of _most_ motherboards. A 32bit 33mhz pci slot can only do about 132mbit. We don't need anything faster, or different. If anything, companies should be getting firewire directly on drives. We don't need to be forced into a 'upgrade'.
We have existing tech that is better. SerialATA=overpriced gear, forcing all of your old drives, etc, into obsolesce.
How is this the 1st review of a SATA drive? ive seen a couple reviews for SATA drives sofar.
Seems like /. was beaten to the punch of slashdotting an article by perhaps another OSDN...
What has become of us in our old age?!?
Please mod this bloody bloke down! Totally off the subject of how americans create awsome technology then the rest of the world produces is for americans to buy at .10/100 vs. the comparable american products!
Lets finnish the DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD+RW/-RW standard before introducing a new hard drive standard, I'm still getting used to USB 2.0
We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this ;)
:^)
Here is someone who could benefit from extra hard disk bandwidth.
--
Become a vampire!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this ;)
;)
I'll give you one guess
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I got here this late and the page still loads...must have one of these new drives themselves.
until SCSI prices fall and I can cache in!!!!
:-)
Does this new type of drive operate on an IDE-like setup of 4 drives or a SCSI-like setup of several more? Can I use these in addition to my existing IDE drives? Have Linux drivers been written? Are they in 2.4 or 2.5 or a patch?
If any Serial ATA makers want me to review them, send a demo copy to:
Travis Goodspeed
621 E. Elmwood St.
Jefferson City, TN 37760
All products that I've previously reviewed have recieved 5 stars and I'm sure yours will to
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I'm currently building a computer for a good friend of mine, and we had planned on building in a Serial ATA RAID for fault tolerance.
Yeah, well... We had all the parts weeks ago... all except the !@X&@! serial ATA drives. Nobody had 'em, and nobody could get 'em. We also couldn't find Serial ATA mobile racks to mount the RAID drives... apparently nobody has those either.
We ended up having to use standard Parallel ATA drives (spare me the "SCSI R0XX0R5!!" flames... this is RAID on the semi-cheap, and it's not a server).
Ah well, nice to see that Somebody can finally lay their hands on these.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
...I just got my new series 3 sata drive...yeah..pixie dust...its a 5 terabyte drive I can access at 600 MBS...
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Page one loaded just fine. Page two and three were equally good, I was thinking it held up well to the load...
Then I tried for page four. No response... then the error.
What I am impressed with is how quickly the admin responded to the load. I wonder what brought it to his attention?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I didn't have a clue what serial ATA was (I'm not a hardware person), so I did a search and found The Serial ATA Working Group web site. That site has an interesting picture showing the difference in cables between parallel and serial cables here . The benefit (with the smaller cables), is that it is easier to maneuver the drives in PC cases. Other benefits of serial ATA are discussed at the web site.
Sex - Find It
Here's what i got trying to view the benchmark page...
;)
We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this
Enjoy the slashdotting, Hexus. it was nice knowing ya... :-)
Page originally available at: hexus.net
Conclusion
The read performance of the Seagate ST380023AS was not as good as we had hoped for. On the other hand write performance was better than we hoped for. In summary one fact is clear, the SATA interface works differently to the IDE interface and when you consider that this is a first generation SATA drive, linked to a motherboard that has the SATA interface located on the PCI bus, limiting it's potential, the overall performance is very good indeed.
The benefits of ultra fast data writing would make this drive ideal for write hungry tasks like video rendering or data backup. The Seagate drive itself is very well made and seems to be very robust. Its quiet operation makes it ideal for inclusion in a system where quietness is of benefit.
Serial ATA is in its infancy. Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received. I for one will be very sorry to have to part with this drive when Seagate ask for it back.
Pros- Very Quiet
- Robust
- Very fast write performance
- Simple SATA data cable connection
Cons/me is betting his karma that this is considered funny.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Reviewer: Simon Maltby
Date of Review: 30th December 2002
Sample Provided by Seagate
Introduction to SATA
Seagate UK kindly have supplied us with one of their new Serial ATA hard drives. We take a look at the new SATA format and attempt to determine what the new format means in real life. Will SATA produce any real improvement in performance?
Before we begin looking at the physical drive it is worth reading a little about the SATA format. The following extract from Seagate's web site provides us with an insight into the serial ATA standard and more importantly it's expected development path.
About the Serial ATA (SATA) format
Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connect, since the 1980\'s (over 15 years!). Today\'s PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent this bus from providing higher speeds of data transfers. The move to a new technology is inevitable in the eyes of industry leaders such as Intel, Dell, Seagate, Maxtor and APT.
These same leaders formed the SerialATA.org and are highly dedicated to bringing this new technology to the forefront of today\'s PCs. Serial ATA is designed to overcome the limitations of parallel ATA while providing scalability for years to come. Setting the goal to be compatible and at cost parity with current parallel ATA drives when in volume, the SerialATA organization is promoting the adoption of Serial ATA in all systems where ATA drives are being used today.
Serial ATA... the future?
What is Serial ATA?
Serial ATA is a \"serial\" architecture as opposed to today\'s \"parallel\" ATA internal disc drive bus. Serial ATA wraps many bits of data into a packet and then at a higher speed (up to 50% higher) than parallel, transfers the packet of data down the wire to or from the host. Today Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is performed on the data being transmitted back and forth but not on the commands. Serial ATA integrates CRC on the command and data packet level for enhanced bus reliability. Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors. A Serial ATA drive can transfer data at 150MB/sec on the bus to the host system with extremely reliable accuracy and the Serial ATA interface will continue to allow scalability for a very long time.
Generation 1Generation 2Generation 3 Approximate Data Rate150mb/sec300mb/sec600mb/sec Approximate Bus Speed1.5gb/sec4gb/sec6gb/sec Approximate IntroductionFall of \'02Mid \'04Mid \'07
Additional Benefits
In addition to a faster, more reliable bus, Serial ATA improves cabling and connectors for a robust yet simpler integration. Gone are the days of bent pins and clumsy cabling and needless returned hard drives. Serial ATA cables are thinner and longer for improved system airflow and innovative system designs such as small form factor and consumer electronic boxes. Connectors are easier to snap into place without any pins but rather a blind-mate type of connection. Without the wide cables, system integrators can easily route the longer data cables (1 meter) within the system for simplicity or innovative designs.
Seagate Technology, A Native in Serial ATA Still in its early market entry stage, Serial ATA provides immediate benefits to desktop users. Serial ATA, an innovative new interface, allows continued performance growth, enhanced data reliability, and overall improved system dynamics above and beyond what Parallel can efficiently continue to provide.
A true \"Native\" Serial ATA solution offers customers the \"Real McCoy\" in Serial ATA technology. By implementing Serial ATA technology, not only on the physical layer of the drive, but also in the ATA controller link and transport layers, Seagate drives can communicate from the drive to the host directly up to the full 150MB/sec speed on the bus. In addition, the native solution incorporates command queuing, which can be a big performance boost in operating systems that can take advantage of that type of function. Some drive manufacturers may not immediately offer these \"native\" Serial ATA features on their 1st generation Serial ATA drives due to the difficulty of this integration.
The Test Drive I
The drive it\'s self looks just like any other computer hard disk drive. Consistent with other Seagate barracuda drives this one is very well built, solid and as attractive as a rectangular box of metal and plastic can be. The label clearly identifies the drive and provides setup information.
Review ModelSeagate ST380023AS Size80gb Speed7,200rpm Seek Time (Average)9ms InterfaceSerial ATA
Here is the description of the drive from Seagate\'s web site...
Seagate\'s Barracuda ATA V with Serial ATA Interface leverages the mechanics of the industry\'s quietest 7200 rpm desktop drive. The Barracuda ATA V offers 80GB and 120GB capacities with an 8MB cache for mainstream, high performance PCs, and entry-level servers. The product features all FDB motors, superior reliability and the next generation interface - Serial ATA. The SATA Barracuda includes Seagate\'s exclusive 3D Defense System and a one-year limited warranty.
FeaturesBenefits 7,200 RPM desktop performanceImproves overall PC performance 350 Gs nonoperating shockProtects drive from shock and vibration 3D Defense SystemIndustry\'s most comprehensive drive and data protection system DiscWizard softwareWorld\'s best disc installation software utility SoftSonic(TM) FDB motorQuietest acoustics on any desktop drive 8-Mbyte cache bufferImproved performance Serial ATA interfaceFastest data transfer rates
The Test Drive II
SATA drives can not be connected to your computer with the standard IDE and Molex power connectors as becomes clear when viewing the back of the drive. Two new interfaces are need to use the drive. If you have a motherboard with serial ATA support you will have probably been supplied with an SATA data cable as shown below. However you will also need a Molex to SATA power conversion lead which is not supplied with either the motherboard or hard drive. I can foresee this power lead becoming a source of frustration for many people ordering SATA drives, hopefully when the drives hit the retail market the cable will be supplied with the hard drive.
Connecting the drive is very easy indeed. The SATA connectors are very well designed and will only fit the correct way round. There are no pins to bend or break as the fittings are more like USB than IDE.
Currently motherboards with SATA connectors run via the PCI bus. Some have connection via a SATA RAID controller, but our test board used a single SATA connector which is linked to a stand alone SATA controller chip. Once installed and booted the drive was displayed in the Bios taking the place of the primary IDE device. Windows XP located the drive as new hardware and the drive was fully visible. The Seagate drive is fully SMART enabled. This gives access to drive monitoring information including temperature.
Benchmarks I
Test Setup
HD Tech - Read Results Graph
The HD Tech benchmark is recognised as the most comprehensive hard drive test available. The benchmark evaluates the Hard drives performance across the whole drive regardless of how the drive is partitioned. It is common for performance to drop the further into the drive the test goes. This is due to the sectors at the end of the disk being physically further from the drives starting point.
Seagate SATA ATA150
Maxtor ATA133
The graphs above show two interesting trends. Although the computer was able to read information from the Maxtor drive faster than the Seagate drive, the opposite is true when it comes to writing data. The Seagate drive shows a consistent write speed with a few downward troughs, where as the Maxtor drive shows a few peaks in performance. Secondly although both drives show the expected reduction in read speed the further into the drive the test goes, the Seagate drive shows a slower decline dropping from circa 40k to 25k. The Maxtor drops more steeply from 50k down to 25k.
The graphs below show the results of all the HD Tech tests carried out during the review. As the benchmark requires unpartitioned drives to test writing speeds only two drives were able to be tested, the Seagate SATA and the Maxtor 120GB 8MB Cache.
Read speed average results
Write speed average results
The Seagate SATA drive did not perform as well as we had hoped in the read tests. Performance was lower than the other 8MB Cache drives whether in a raid configuration or straight forward IDE. The drive is far from being slow, but with the same 8MB Cache and the equivalent of ATA150 transfer speeds we hoped for more. Despite the average scores showing lower the Seagate drive did display better consistency across the drive as a whole and also proved significantly better in the write tests, some 30% better than the Maxtor.
Benchmarks II
Sandra Benchmark
The Sandra benchmark is less reliable than the HD Tech because it tests a partition rather than the whole drive and as we have seen performance changes depending on where on the drive the partition is located. When testing for the review we ensured that all the test drives had the same sized partition and that it was at the start of the physical disk.
The results show the same story as HD tech, although we are unable to break down the Sandra scores to establish where the Seagate drive falls down.
General Usage
Hot Swapping
An interesting attribute associated with SATA devices is that they should be \'Hot Swappable\', that means that you should be able to move devices around while your operating system is running. On the face of it this would be very useful. Care must be taken when moving hard disks around because while the internal discs are spinning damage can be caused easily. With the SATA drive installed as a non system disk we were able to disconnect the drive with windows XP running. Unlike USB device when removed, windows did not realise that the drive was no longer connected and it remained visible!
Noise
Seagate have produced a very well built drive in the ST380023AS. The casing is very solid and the mechanism well balanced. As a result it is most defiantly the quietest hard disk drive I have ever used. If you are looking for an ultra quiet drive then this one should be on your shopping list.
Reliability
The test drive was run continually for a week cycling the Sandra benchmark. Although the drive can get quite hot, rising to 45c under very heavy load, it performed without fault. SMART monitoring did not detect any problems during our testing. It should be remembered that a weeks hard testing does not give any real indication of the drives long term reliability, but we can take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the IDE Barracuda drives have proven to be one of the most reliable in the market thus far.
Price
Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT. This puts a small premium on the SATA format.
Conclusion
The read performance of the Seagate ST380023AS was not as good as we had hoped for. On the other hand write performance was better than we hoped for. In summary one fact is clear, the SATA interface works differently to the IDE interface and when you consider that this is a first generation SATA drive, linked to a motherboard that has the SATA interface located on the PCI bus, limiting it's potential, the overall performance is very good indeed.
The benefits of ultra fast data writing would make this drive ideal for write hungry tasks like video rendering or data backup. The Seagate drive itself is very well made and seems to be very robust. Its quiet operation makes it ideal for inclusion in a system where quietness is of benefit.
Serial ATA is in its infancy. Seagate have produced an excellent hard disk drive at the high quality end of the market place which should be very well received. I for one will be very sorry to have to part with this drive when Seagate ask for it back.
Pros
Cons
C:\>
Tt was intended. Spoken puns are sinning against the English language, but written ones are fine so long as they look like typos.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Firewire is 400mbit, USB 2 is over 400mbit... but SCSI-160 is 160 mBYTE, which is considerably faster. The PCI bus is capable of 133ish mBYTEs per second throughput, significantly (8x) faster than 133mBIT. Of course, if you're going to be using SCSI-160 with any real intent for performance, you're going to be using a 64-bit 66MHz PCI bus/device (try finding quality cards that work in 32bit 33Mhz pci slots at 160). That is considerably faster, capable of transfering up to 512 mBYTES per second. That's not too bad, really, for such a general purpose I/O bus. Compare that to the cpu-ram interconnect speed of an Athlon, which is FAST at 2.1 gBYTE per second per cpu.
Firewire and USB are neat, and darned quick (quicker than most drives can go... by themselves) but 400 mBIT is really only about 40 megabytes (ok little more) per second max. Not even in the same league.
MAC is still on ATA/66... meanwhile PC has had ATA/100, ATA/120, and now Serial ATA.
Apple robs their customers. In Soviet Russia, Apple's customers rob you!
that was intended as well
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Apple users blow Steve Jobs. In Soviet Russia, Steve Jobs blows you!
asshole.
All your base are belong to us. In Soviet Russia, us belong to YOU!
Bolding and links? Who could ask for anything more?
Whenever I've needed higher throughput on a high end desktop or server I just went out and put in an Adaptec SCSI card and SCSI drive.
I can see the benefits of the new cable design but don't see how the SATA architecture really benefits over SCSI.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
SATA will scale better than parallel ATA - PATA is hard to scale given its bus nature. SATA should scale well up to at least 600MBPS theoretical throughput.
SATA has a smaller footprint than PATA, thus making it more economical to implement in mainboards where PCB space is at a premium. There is also a reduction of signal wires, so again it is more economical to use the drives.
SATA's smaller cables also allow for more creative formfactors and cabling solutions. PATA had short, wide, and ugly cabling. SATA has longer spec cabling, and its much thinner than PATA's, so cable routing is easier for OEMs.
Simply put, in its current form SATA isn't really a revolution, it's an evolution of the ATA standard, more out of convenience than anything.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
How good is SATA support in Linux these days? Can I get a SATA card and expect to actually use it soon? Will Linux support Tagged Command Queing on this bus? Will SATA CD-RW drives use more 'native' support than scsi-emulation?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Or should that be
All your base are belong to us. In Soviet Russia, us being to all your base!
I don't know. In any case, I almost got mugged by three niggers yesterday...
...we hot swap IDE devices and like it being broken!
Cyclic redundancy code detects all single and double-bit errors and ensures detection of 99.998% of all possible errors.
That simply means that out of 1 of every 50,000 error will get through. Considering that the device is designed to transport 150 million bytes per second, that's not so impressive.
Why the new connector? After all, it does plug, ultimately, in a standard ATX power supply. And they even provide a conversion cable ( == less reliable).
Sigged!
Probably.
DARPA intends to conduct a race of autonomous ground vehicles from the vicinity of Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2004. A cash prize will be awarded to the winner. The purpose of the race is to encourage the accelerated development of autonomous vehicle technologies that could be applied to military requirements. Many of the details of the race are being developed. New details will be posted to this web site as soon as possible.
The new power connector is needed for hot-swap.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks.
But I guess a standard power connector could be provided on the drive, alongside with the new one. So if the drive will be internal, one could use the standard connector, instead of having to use this abomination of a powerconnector adapter. I am a bit paranoid about daisy-chaining power cords.
Sigged!
A connector that slides easily is perfect for hot-swappable, external drives (drives in disc enclosures), but it's not the best idea for an internal drive. In a disc enclosure, the drive is kept in place using levers and other mechanical means, while the connectors are mounted on a fixed surface or rail. Internal drives (expecially in PCs) don't have such a rail, so the cable would be freely "floating" from the drive. OK, I'm paranoid, but I just don't like it.
Provide me with both connectors on the drive, and I'm happy.
Sigged!
New because the old friction-fit molex power connectors suck.
Actually, it's for hot-swapability. The old molex power connectors would make your drive virtually glued in, and you'd have to jiggle it to get the contacts to fit. The new power connectors are designed for hot-swap operation. They're smaller, easier to slide in and out, and have longer ground wires which ensures the drive is grounded *before* any power is delivered. The same long-short wiring is used in the data cables, where the 3 grounding pins connect before the 4 data pins (two pairs using differential signalling) connect.
I'm not sure how you figure an adapter is less reliable. Have you *ever* had a molex power connector come apart on you unexpectedly? I count myself lucky if I can get them apart on purpose!
This early in the migration, there may be issues here and there, but when SATA becomes the standard, there will be connectors for it right on the PSU's cabling, and motherboards will support tons of SATA channels straight to the northbridge rather than ganged onto the PCI bus, and maybe hotswap drives will start to be the norm. Alright, not that last bit, but the first two should happen pretty quickly since SATA is cheaper for the manufacturer, as well as better for the consumer.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
because using more conductors on the cable the drive can be powered by the bus cable, it also is needed for hotswap capability.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have no idea why people are expecting SATA to be faster... no drive out there can even push a Ultra ATA/100 bus...
The real advantage is the cabeling... Point to Point connections rather than master/slave setups, hot-swap and the new connectors make these drives usable in servers - and thats what the industry was going for... Just look at SCSI with its SCA connector - the new plugs are pretty much the same...
Also - hot-swap is hardware only right now - without specific drivers the OS will not be notified about the change and will therefore cause you troubles (caches not written and so on...) if you try to hot-swap...
If you're too impatient to wait for a writable DVD standard to emerge (like I am) then check out Sony's DRU-500A DVD burner. It records to all four DVD formats as well as CD formats. I got one for Christmas and so far I'm enjoying it. :)
My Company
In Soviet Russia, old joke fed up with you! (My apologies, I could not resist.)
And if snail mail is just to slow, please call Mr. Travis Goodspeed @ (865) 475-7660
Have a lovely day
when i first saw the address, i was like, thats totally like, made up, and totally doesnt exist,
But like, it totally does, and its totally his real, like where he lives address, wow
SATA starts at about 150MB/sec in the first generation, but don't forget that your standard 32bit 33mhz PCI slot can only do about 133 MB per second. New bus technology will need to be implemented before real performance will be seen from these drives.
I don't think these geniuses performed the hot swap correctly.
Windows should absolutely NOT report the drive with a letter after you've properly taken out the drive. This is because you are supposed to UMOUNT the fcsking drive before you do it! (There is a windows equivalent to a umount in the drive manager.) This is sort of important considering that any good OS will cache reads and write to physical disks to improve I/O speeds. Pulling a live drive out of a system is likely to create unusable filesystems on that drive.
BTW: If done correctly, you can easily remove drives from parallel ATA controllers already. In fact, you can buy caddies and mounts for hot swapping ATA/100 drives from a bunch of vendors on pricewatch.
Oh well, at least they thought they were helping. lmao!
WTF? No really, WTF?
Why does this keep getting posted when it is clearly off-topic?
And why on every single f*cking thread?
These drives will also be the first drives available with 'digital rights management" built in. While you may get away with using them in a current MP3 player, be careful. You may find when you get them near a Longhorn system some day that M$ was serious about that "we have the right to delete anything we damn well please" provision in the click through license; even if the company who built the computer clicked it rather than you.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
But it only counts as $20 because it isn't printed on real money. RIAA math swings both ways!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
"Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT."
here and now eh?
The next generation of PCI, PCI Express (formerly 3GIO) features scalable bus width. The thinnest version is a single 250 megabyte per second "lane", which sounds like it could potentially replace USB, Firewire and Serial ATA with devices that are directly mapped into processor memory and IO space in a manner that is a bit reminiscent of the origin of IDE drives.
It must be your computer... I haven't seen any mention of this anywhere else on /. Maybe it's showing up everywhere on your box from a Windows crack. Interesting link, tho, sometimes cruising at -1 is a good thing. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of autonomous land vehicles...
I see the data side has very few pins, but the power side has a ton more.. What is up with that?
The interesting benchmark is Barracuda V w/ parallel ATA vs. Barracuda V w/ SATA. It would be intersting to see the performance difference due solely to SATA. In this benchmark we can't tell if the differences are due to the interface or to the drive mechanisms.
Why the new connector?
It's cheaper. Notice that the "connector" on the drive is just a routed tab in the PCB, like a PCI/ISA card. The cable itself costs slightly more, but the drive is significantly cheaper because there's no connector at all to install there. The old-style connectors were almost certainly placed by hand before soldering.
The Tom's HW review sort of implies that serial is somehow inherently faster than parallel, which is BS. Serial is just *cheaper* than parallel. Instead of big honking connectors and bulky ribbon cables, you have a nice thin cable. Data rates aren't a bottleneck with parallel IDE, and if you used the same differential signalling with a parallel interface, you could get n times the bandwidth vs serial, where n == number of pairs.
The comparison in the review was basically useless. They compared totally different drive models, in addition to the fact that the interfaces were different. Two significant variables, so there's no way to tell if there's something inherently good/bad about SATA from this review. They should have reviewed two very similar Seagate Barracuda drives, with the interface being the main difference.
Without even having to review the drive, I'd have to say that when they get the kinks worked out of the firmware, and possibly the host/drive SATA controller(s), these drives will be just as fast in every respect as their older ATA counterparts.
I know little about SATA, but I would hope that they've fixed the addressing problem inherent in ATA. You should be able to address a large number of devices on a bus, or the benefits of SATA will be limited. SCSI will always be the choice of high-end server class machines until they can fix this problem. Also, the price of the SATA drive doesn't seem all that different from SCSI drives of the same capacity. They need to fix that too.
Speaking as a child of the 80's, it's good to know I've been around for over 15 years!
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. - Christopher Walken
I've only read about 3 reviews on SATA so far, and I think it's the next most logical step. However, something that I've noticed missing from comments thus far is that even though they're adding things into the IDE world that SCSI/FC have had for a while (hot-swap, bus-speed).
Number of heads.
This is probably the largest reason I don't use IDE in production outside of workstations. SCSI drives normally have 128-256 heads (unless something has drastically changed, in which case I'll no doubt be corrected), where IDE in any flavor has 16. For a home system, it's fine, but for server environments, that's just not gonna fly. Especially where you're constantly accessing numerous files (db, email, 10k virtual site webserver) more heads improve the access rate and help on the ol' wear and tear as well.
Also, the power couplers kinda freak me out. Tho the molex connectors that we are used to SUCK to remove, they don't come off real easy due to any sort of bumping (ie, sliding the case into the rack or accidentally kicking the tower when sitting down.)
I do think getting the drive bus the heck off the PCI bus will be a huge benefit down the road, but currently it'll just take traffic off the PCI controller and over to the Northbridge. Might help in ethernet (gigabit) communications not having to share.
All said and done, I think there is too much hype about SATA. It comes with some good ideas, but things like hot-swap for your average user (floppies are hot-swap, but how many peeps you know STILL pull the bloody floppy out with the light still on..) are not the answer. For myself (and other power-junkies) it'd be kinda cool provided I could purchase a nice backplane or cage for my tower.
Small gripe on the incredibly shoddy review, though. There's a HUGE difference between 150mb and 150MB. (one is milli-bit, the other megabytes) Normally I won't get onto folks for grammar/spelling, but in this case, it does make some of the graphs, etc. rather confusing.
-What have you contributed lately?
http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=477&pag e=3
Features
3D Defense System
In case aliens attack your hard drive?
Right now, I use IDE on most of my machines. Why? Because most of the time I don't need great disk IO, I don't need more than 2-3 drives, and I can usually live with the lack of reliability that is IDE.
That said, SCSI is far better, and is doing now, for reasonable prices, what Serial ATA is only claiming it will be able to do eventually, and a lot more in addition. SCSI drives with comparable specs, right now, don't cost much more than IDE drives. If the push to serial increases the prices, suddenly, SCSI will be the bargain interface, as well as the performance interface, which eliminates the entire IDE/ATA market. In addition, SCSI to IDE adapters would give most users backwards compatibility, which would eliminate that from being a benefit to serial ATA as well.
So, it may soon be time for everyone to make the switch.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
OK quick, we actually have an acronym which is close to being a word here, so everyone try to think of what we can tack onto the END of Serial ATA, preference is given to anything that starts with an "N" !
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Ummm, no as we are finding out at high speed parallel just doesn't work over any sizeable distance (the fastest parallel conduits are the memory buses on the motherboard and they have to be kept VERY short). Crosstalk interference (helped but not eliminated by differential signaling), timing mistmatches etc are all problems, not to mention that the more conductors the more chance of random interference/breaks. Also the controll logic is cheaper up to a point (if your needed speed for matched performance is at the top of what current silicon can do then you probably are not going to save anything, see Rambus at launch)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Which means that you could catch one hell of a lawsuit for sending it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I am not sure why it went down they have taken a few before....
Anyway...
It is a hotswap ready/capable connector. Quite often, the different signals can have different pin length for sequencing power/detection.
That is assuming that the power circuits have slew rate control & current limiting for minimizing the inrush current for protection and not distrupting the rest of the system.
It astounds me that the Serial ATA spec did not integrate the power and data into the same connector. It could have done so much to reduce the rat's nest inside the typical loaded PC/Server. Now, instead of simply having one cable go from the motherboard to each drive, we are still stuck with power supplies that have a huge mass of wires and cables hanging off of them.
Power supply manufacturers will, undoubtedly, start including cables terminated with Serial ATA power connectors so that the adapters won't be needed. But since there are so many legacy hard drives, CD-ROM, DVD, CD-R/W, etc. drives out there, they will have to also include the crappy four-pin Molex connectors. And, let's not forget the 3.5" floppy power connectors that they will also be supplying. Invariably, your power supply won't have enough of the connectors you need, and will have too many of the ones that you don't. You'll be forced to go out and buy adapters and Y-cables to make it all work.
I'm sure that someone will say that it would be too taxing to route that much power through the motherboard, but modern CPUs consume about 60 watts for the CPU alone. The Seagate drive tested consumes a peak current of 26 watts (2.2amps at 12V). Motherboards could easily have been designed to handled the load from a dozen such hard drives.
What a missed opportunity this was.
AAAAAH!!!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
that number was only meant for Ellen!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Roughly $150 USD for a 7200 RPM, 80GB, 9ms drive? Holy crap does SATA suck.
For the same price I can get a 36GB Ultra160 15,000 RPM HD. Sure, it's half the size but it's more than twice the throughput (160MB/sec vs. roughly 75MB/sec) and over 2.5 times faster seek time.
I never thought I'd see the day when SCSI is a better buck/performance value than the alternative.
The price they're quoting includes VAT (Value Added Tax), which currently runs at 17.5% in the UK. Take off the VAT and you're down to about $153. But stuff in the UK always costs more than in the US anyway.
....the data connector has got smaller, yet the power connector got larger.
you want to be able to pirate, courier and crack illegally possessed content/programs faster and more conveniently than ever? I'd be content with that.
The limiting factor in pretty much all serious drives today is the physics, not the bandwidth. Unless you have a huge cache on your drive and data that's friendly to it, raising the bandwidth isn't going to help much any time soon.
Are you referring to the old "two drives on one IDE channel" issue? That hasn't been a problem since the mid-90s.
Has anyone here (and I'm including full-time BOsFH) ever had the need to set up such a system, or anything close to it? Surely you're looking at hardware RAID arrays rather than zillions of independent hard drives anyway by that point, which kinda makes the IRQ issue a moot point, no?
I think it's all pretty academic in the immediate future anyway, though. I'm actually building a new PC for myself right now, just ordered all the parts yesterday. And I've ordered a nice parallel-ATA Seagate 'cuda IV for my HDD. Why? Because the parallel-ATA 'cuda Vs get reviews that say "good, but nothing much over the IV", and the serial-ATA versions of any of their drives were listed as "long wait expected" or something similar on every supplier site I looked at.
It seems like it'll be a while before you can actually buy these things easily, and after that it'll inevitably be a while longer before they stabilise the teething problems. My new mobo is serial-ATA capable, but I doubt I'll be using it until the next round of upgrades in a year or two.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The review on HEXUS.net left a great deal to be desired. HD Tach and SISandra are interesting numbers, but hardly representative of how the drive will react in the "real world." StorageReview has posted a much more comprehensive set of benchmarks on this drive at StorageReview Although StorageReview does not yet have the formal review posted, some interesting results do emerge. The SATA Barracuda V drive beats the PATA Barracuda V drive in most benchmarks. For instance, the SR High-End DriveMark 2002 goes from 285 for the PATA to 355 for the SATA. However, since the SATA drive has an 8MB cache vs a 2MB cache on the PATA drive, it's not clear how much the improved results are due to the interface versus the cache.
Unfortunately, the numbers are not yet available for the File Server DriveMark test, which might give an indication of how much the drive benefits from support for tagged command queueing like SCSI drives have.
Note that the performance results for the SCSI drives versus the Barracuda V are not a valid indication of the raw capability of the SATA interface. Virtually all of the SCSI drives are 10k and 15k RPM drives, which one would expect to be substantially faster than a 7K RPM drive such as the Barracuda.
Finally, the explanation on HEXUS.net as to why the drive slows down at the end of the HD Tach test is simply wrong. The review says that "[The slowdown] is due to the sectors at the end of the disk being physically further from the drives starting point." The reality is that the drive slows down at the end of the test because the inner rings are smaller and therefore less data passes under the head for each revolution of the disk.
I wrote Seagate sales an email earlier this month asking why the home page of their web site says, "Available now - The Barracuda ATA V" when it isn't actually possible to purchase one of those drives. They replied that the drives have been shipping to OEMs, but not to the retail channel.
The email also said that SATA Barracuda V drives were supposed to start shipping to the retail channel in late December, but I haven't seen one show up as "in stock" on CDW or pricewatch.com yet.
Hot Swap and room for 3.3v 5v and 12v.
Second, the pictures don't show the SATA connector, and are low enough resolution they could be any recent Seagate drive
Third, the 'benchmarks' and such are all cut and paste from the data sheet.
I think this whole thing is a fraud.
Have you *ever* had a molex power connector come apart on you unexpectedly? I count myself lucky if I can get them apart on purpose!
I keep a set of channel locks around for the connectors in one of my systems, and they still usually take 5-10 seconds of pulling to remove. The connectors go in just fine; it's coming out that takes ten minutes and results in pained fingers without tools.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
We are having major server problems at the moment. Something is up - we will fix this ;)
http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/sata150/
Take a look at the article on that website as it actually talks about the more technical issues including why they switched the power connector.
I understand servers, but the average consumer ... do they really need this?
As a gamer the performance curve comes from the CPU and GPU not from modern drives.
As a mp3/divx abuser I need space not speed. My hear can only listen to MP3s so fast. And once again CPU power is the limiter on Divx encoding.
My Mom only uses Word/Excel/PowerPoint, a 800MHz is fast enough for her.
I don't see a need to obsolete all my old HDs and data for a 80Gb drive that is needlessly (for the average consumer) faster.
30 MB/sec is the physical limit of platter storage. There will never be anything faster, no matter how new the bus is.
How many of us are pushing huge streams of data in and out of our drives? Unless you're working with uncompressed video, I doubt many.
How much longer must I wait for 10k or 15k IDE drives?
Does anyone know how to measure whether your system is spending more time finding data or pushing data?
If software initiates a read request at time t0, the drive begins reading at t1, and the request is completed at t2, what is larger on average? (t1-t0) or (t2-t1)?
Normally I wouldn't comment, but the hype has obviously gotten out of control.
1. As a developer of serial ATA IP, I can assure you that there is NO content rights management stuff implemented in *our* SATA gear, and I doubt there's any in other folks.
2. You're right that it's all about the cabling for now. Few IDE drives are able to push ATA/66, much less SATA's 150MB/sec top-end.
3. SATA is great for cheap, high-end performance and far better than SCSI. It's point-to-point. That means each drive is directly connected to the controller. There is no shared bus, as with SCSI. It's most interesting when you take 4 or more relatively cheap drives and RAID them... 40MB/sec * 4 = 160MB/sec. SCSI 160 simply will not give you 160MB/sec without multiple drives. Drives that come close tend to be high capacity drives that only use the outermost sectors and have a correspondingly high price. Servers and high-end workstations can take advantage of this now.
4. SATA will scale easily to 300MB/sec and 600MB/sec in the next year or so if drive manufacturers can keep up.
5. The "on-motherboard" SATA controllers you see now are really parallel ATA controllers with convertors. You won't see the promised performance on them. Only two companies currently have a 100% SATA end-to-end solution.
6. Try booting your OS or loading applications from a 32-drive RAID subsystem based on sub $100 drives. $3500 can buy you 1.6GB/sec of sustainable write performance...simply unheard of. Files go POP. You can use virtual memory at speeds approaching that of RAM, especially on systems with multiple PCI-X 133 buses. 400MHz FSB = 3.2GB/sec.
7. Don't get hosed by bottlenecks. If you have only PCI 33 buses, you can't possibly get more than 132MB/sec. PCI-66 = 264MB/sec. PCIX-133 = 1056MB/sec. PER BUS. Servers have multiple PCI buses which is why they cost more. Most low-end workstations DO NOT. The best possible solution is SATA integrated directly into the north/south bridge where it can speak directly to the memory controller (similar to AGP), which you'll see on servers in the next 6 months. If it's a separate chip or, worse, a multiple chip implementation, you're buying a crappy implementation. Anything less than 32 SATA channels should be on ONE chip, not glued together from a bunch of general purpose parts...remember those video adapters with 50 chips on them? and now most have 2 or 3 chips?
Finally, learn to think about SATA performance the same as SMP. Two cheap(er) processors will often out-perform a fast, expensive processor. 4, 8, 16 or 32 dirt cheap SATA drives will beat the snot out of a lesser number of exotic, expensive Ultra 320 SCSI drives. FiberChannel is only 2Gb/sec (200MB/sec.) and is also a shared bus.
Yet another inferior, but cheaper and better marketted technology getting furthur hacked to try and give it features the better and more expensive options have had for years...
Instead of creating new untested technologies, why not work on making what we already have more cost effective?
All these so-called new feature of serial ata have long been supported by scsi devices, there are plenty of existing scsi cards on the market, plenty of drives, albeit costly. And you have full backwards compatibility with older devices.
All we need are more motherboards with onboard scsi, and some drives more comparatively priced with ide ones, ok so they wont offer the high end performance of the 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives.. but they will still beat ide drives using the same mechanism.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
only thing i dont like is havin to wait 2007 for 600mb a second, thats like 3-4 seconds per movie. sounds fast now, but wait till multi TB drives come out. and as far as digital rights management goes, M$ can lick my balls as always. look to the internet and the angry white hacker community to patch any of that crap within hours of implementation. there are some ppl who will NEVER pay for warez. you can spend billions on trying to prevent them, or you can spend millions to keep the other 99% in line
A name you can trust.
Removable Hard-disk System:
A consortium of companies developing a removable hard-disk system for consumer use called the Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage (iVDR) plans to unveil a prototype 1.8-in. drive with a serial ATA interface for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month, an iVDR consortium representative said this week. The iVDR system will be shown outside of Japan for the first time at the event, which will take place in Las Vegas in January.
(here)
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
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