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Serial ATA Drives Mature and Get Faster
MojoDog writes "Serial ATA drives are still as scarce as hen's teeth but what models are
trickling out from Seagate and Maxtor, are beginning to look promising.
This article and performance analysis shows the new DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA
Hard Drive putting up some impressive figures in standard SATA 150 and SATA 150 RAID
0 configurations."
From the article: Our first look at a Serial ATA drive, quite frankly, was a little less than inspiring. That is to say that, even though the SATA 150 standard offers a higher bandwidth interface and those tidy, thin little cables, the performance of the first drive to hit our bench, a Seagate Barracuda V, was about on par with the average ATA100 or ATA133 drive on the market.
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Free your mind.
I once heard that the size of future computers will be limited by their component's connectors.
That said, I wonder if we will ever get to the point of performance where a drive can sit next to a computer and communicate via a (secure) wireless connection - either RF or IR (or ??).
Of course, then the above phrase will be that the size of future computers will be limited to their component's antennas.
Basically, I've *got* to find some way to get rid of the huge clump of cables under my desk!
Are IDE/S-ATA disks less reliable than SCSI on purpose (marketing) or only because we remember they were and think they still are ?
Can't say much for SCSI since they're so absurdly expensive per MB that I'd rather take a chance with my data than pay SCSI's going rates... But umm, yea... Modern IDE drives lose data. The most common problem isn't that they crash, it's that they end up with one or more inaccessable sector(s), you run the included recertification utility and it restores your drive to error-free status but it also *fucks up the filesystem in the process.
End result: Lost data.
With how often I've seen this happen with current 40GB, 80GB and 120GB drives, I'm beginning to think RAID isn't really a luxury anymore.
* I couldn't say fscks here, it might get taken in the wrong context.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
There's probably a PCI card out already, if not there will be soon, so yes the xserve will be able to handle SATA in time if not already.
What I want to know is why you would expect anyone other than yourself to pay for it?. You obviously wanted xserves, so you got xserves and you paid for xserves. Is there some hidden part of the sale contract that makes you believe you're entitled to cheap future tech?
Beta software I understand, you can always upgrade... and as often as not, it's free.
Early adopting hardware seems to be a risk, as you're spending money, and you have to be pretty lucky to get it for free.
If I had the money to burn however....
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I think the main thing (feel free to correct me anyone) is that SATA is a drop in replacement for Parallel ATA. It should just work, without requiring a whole bunch of new drivers. That's not to say that writing a whole bunch of new drivers wouldn't get more out of the technology, but it's not a requirement in order for it to work. Firewire on the other hand does require special drivers, and it's not yet *that* common on desktop PC's. Also, although I'm not sure of the state of Firewire support in Linux, I would bet anything it's nowhere near as good as the IDE support (which still has its own problems of course).
They could start using five 8 guage wires instead of the many small ones :)
Eliminating the negative voltages that aren't really used anymore for much could help. Most modern implementations of RS-232 cheat and use inverted TTL anyway.
SCSI is only slightly more expensive than IDE.
Typically you pay at least four times as much per GB if you buy SCSI instead of IDE.
inexpensive SCSI drives.
Though a massproduced SCSI drive should be possible at prices comparable to an IDE drive of the same size and speed, they are very rare. In fact I never saw one. So I guess a lot of people would be happy if you would tell us where they can be bought.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Exactly - credit cards have been using the same magnetic strip "technology" since the early 70s.
Japan and Europe have smart cards in wide use, but the U.S. lags. We still manually input name and address information into disparate point of sales systems for every vendor. That's just sad.
-Kevin
SATA is just a start. There are other things that contribute to the problem. There's the wiring harness on the power supply. That's one mess of spagetti. Also, they still need to get ATAPI supported in SATA so you can get DVD/CDROM off of parallel cables. Case design is also a factor. Apparently, wire and cable routing is not one of the issues addressed in case design. Position and layout of physical components always seems to be the worst possible from a cable layout point of view. You always seem to be taking the long way around, forcing sharp right angle turns in fat cable/wire bundles and competing for too little space to place separate cables along side each other.
Sounded like an honest question. Yes we have started to test Serial drives, on a couple of the newer motherboards. I own a consulting company and we like to test all hardware before allowing any of out clients to deploy it. So we were running tests on the Seagate Barracuda series, as you well know is about the only drive we could get our hands on. For our motherboard we used a Abit KD7-S RAID. I happen to love Abit, but I have no data to prove this is the best board, I guess it's just a gut feeling. The install went easy, and yes, it freed up a lot of space in the computer, which may be an advantage to dual CPU people who have heat problems in their cases. Maybe in the future they'll make cases around the idea of having the heat output of the hard drive farther from the CPU because of the length available to serial ata. But if your looking for a big performance jump. I am terribly sorry. It is a very nice system, and runs fine, I will say, I had no troubles whatsoever and have added this box to my home network, and use it for encoding my home videos of my sons soccer tapes, 7 years of soccer, 15 games a year= lots and lots of divx encoding time. lol. But seriously, if your a gamer, or for that matter, just a performance computer enthusiast that is still concerned with cost, then get yourself a good ATA133 drive. For the cost of the drives and the larger drive sizes you can buy, I think it isn't worth it to make the jump to Serial ATA yet. But we have found something to use these Serial ATA drives for. I now have a small computer installed into the trunk of my TA and I run serial ATA and power to a mount I installed in my dash, where I now have a place that I can push in a Serial ATA drive to use in my in car DVD/MP3/Fuel control system computer. It's great, I can plug in an 80GB hard drive in my house, transfer all the divx movies, MP3s and whatever else I want for my week of commuting to and from the office, pop the drive out of my case at home, (I made it so I can slide it in/out of the face) and pop the drive in my dash in my car, and watch my divx's on my in dash LCD when I am sitting in high traffic. So this technology certainly has its advantages. even if it really isn't speed yet.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Given the mobo manufacturers' tendency to leave legacy connectors on long after the need for them has all but disappeared, i.e. parallel & serial connectors, I suppose we'll still see PATA connectors on the mobo's for years.
1.2 Million hours? Sure, I know some drives do last a long time but 137 years? And I certainly wouldn't put my money on a fast, hot, 10,000RPM drive lasting that long either.
I would like too see any relatively complex machine last 137 years without repair, even under ideal conditions. Especially something as sensitive as a hard disk.