Speed difference between IDE and SATA???

Entai · 6 Jul 2006 at 19:31

Have just got a Seagate 7200.10 320GB hard drive off the infamous auction site. It was advertised as SATA 2 interface but when it arrived it was actually the IDE ATA 100 version.

I have e-mailed the seller and am awaiting his reply over what to do next but in the meantime I was after an answer to the following.

I am wondering what noticeable speed difference there would be between the IDE and the SATA version of the drive in real world conditions.
The ide version is only ATA 100 but as the drive itself in any version will only support sustained transfer rates of 78 mbps (from the seagate website) then surely the SATA version is wasted unles you are raiding them to make the most of the higher transfer rates.

I am guessing burst transfer rates would be higher, but how often do you really get high burst rates sustained for a length of time whereby they would actually swamp the ATA 100 standard, when only one drive is connected.

I am hoping that the speed benefit of perpendicular storage will outweigh the lack of outright interface speed.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice anyone can give.

Messiah Khan · 6 Jul 2006 at 19:53

You correct in assuming that SATA will make no difference in speed over IDE, unless your talking about RAID.

t31os · 6 Jul 2006 at 22:35

Rubbish, sata is definately a noticable amount faster.

PinkFloyd · 6 Jul 2006 at 23:09

In theory Sata 2 should be a hell of a lot faster (3x quicker)
in practise it isn't but there should still be a performance boost from using a sata drive

Silver_&_Gold · 6 Jul 2006 at 23:37

Entai said:
I am wondering what noticeable speed difference there would be between the IDE and the SATA version of the drive in real world conditions.

None tbh.

Jokester · 6 Jul 2006 at 23:40

SATA is only faster for burst data from the drive Cache, of course the data needs to be in the drive cache for you to see that benefit.

Jokester

semi-pro waster · 7 Jul 2006 at 01:58

As most of the others have said you are unlikely to notice any difference in normal use, benchmarking might show a benefit but other than that not a great deal better.

Having said that I'd be asking for money back from the seller or a replacement as it wasn't what was advertised, SATA has neater cabling and is at least theoretically faster not to mention the fact that your SATA ports are otherwise doing nothing and you would be (most likely) sharing your IDE chain with more than one device.

t31os · 7 Jul 2006 at 02:23

Are you guys telling me you've never noticed an overall speed boost when using sata over ide?....

Windows installs a hell of a lot faster, games load faster, aps run faster..... don't see how its not noticable.

semi-pro waster · 7 Jul 2006 at 02:36

t31os said:
Are you guys telling me you've never noticed an overall speed boost when using sata over ide?....

Windows installs a hell of a lot faster, games load faster, aps run faster..... don't see how its not noticable.

I've not noticed a difference that is solely attributal to SATA, no. Most of the improvements will be in drive engineering, if you compare two otherwise identical drives but with the different interfaces I doubt you would notice any speed difference worthy of note.

jbloggs · 7 Jul 2006 at 09:48

semi-pro waster wrote:

if you compare two otherwise identical drives but with the different interfaces I doubt you would notice any speed difference worthy of note

Indeed, the difference would only be negligible, if noticeable at all.

cobxx · 7 Jul 2006 at 10:28

SATA is best for 2 things....neat cabling or raid. Really not gonna notice any real speed difference with just 1 drive in the same conditions as an IDE

TheVoice · 7 Jul 2006 at 10:33

Would NCQ etc not make an SATA drive slightly faster?

I think I'd rather have the SATA one myself. Although it would be nice to see some kind of review pitching identical SATA and IDE drives against each other, just to see for sure.

I remember hearing that SATA involves less CPU usage and less power consumption (somehow) too. Don't know how true that is. I think I'd rather have the SATA drive, though.

Messiah Khan · 7 Jul 2006 at 10:35

t31os said:
Are you guys telling me you've never noticed an overall speed boost when using sata over ide?....

Windows installs a hell of a lot faster, games load faster, aps run faster..... don't see how its not noticable.

A drive that is capable of say 60Mbps on a 100Mbps connection will transfer at 60Mbps. The same drive on a 150Mbps connection will still transfer at 60Mbps. So no, there is no speed difference, other than as Jokester said the burst speed. However bust speed is really not an indicator of the speed of a drive. The reason why you probably have noticed a difference is due to the SATA drive being based on newer technology, causing the drives transfer rate to be higher.

noxidjkram@hotm · 9 Jul 2006 at 08:54

As said the interface SATA/IDE wont make much difference.

One other point that no-one else seems to have picked up on (unless i've misread) is that the drive you were promised is the new 7200.10 Seagate, and this WOULD be noticably faster than the ATA version - the 7200.10s are comparable (in some regards) to a Raptor for speed.

[edit] - Just noticed you can get the 7200.10 in IDE form too, didnt think you coudl for some reason -

Please ignore me until i wake up[\edit]

M

noxidjkram@hotm · 9 Jul 2006 at 08:55

TheVoice said:
Would NCQ etc not make an SATA drive slightly faster?

NCQ tends to slow things down in a desktop environment - it only really shows its own for server stuff.

M

Messiah Khan · 9 Jul 2006 at 09:35

noxidjkram@hotm said:
[edit] - Just noticed you can get the 7200.10 in IDE form too, didnt think you coudl for some reason - Please ignore me until i wake up[\edit]

M

Don't worry, I didn't realise you could get them either.