sata drive question.

[luvvbuzz]

i am buying a new pc on friday. i have found a place that sells what i want at the price i want and it has a number of optional extras. one of them is a 120gb sata hard drive. i am not sure what sata is, i understand that its is quite faster than ide, correct me if i am wrong. but i was wondering if it is possible to connect the 120gb sata drive to my raid card (ata133)? would that be possible? basically i have a 40gb 7200rpm drive that i want to use as the master boot drive and i want to slave the 120gb drive, would i gain anything by upgrading the 120gb ide to sata as a slave drive? is it better to just get a 120gb ide instead?

[redwudz]

SATA=Serial ATA drive. Mostly faster than ATA. Smaller cable, different power supply hookup.

If your MB and PS have the connectors, SATA is probably the future ATA replacement. Prices are getting equal to the ATA drives. Quite a few of the higher end MBs have SATA capability. I believe there are SATA to IDE adapters available, but I wouldn't think it would be worth using one off an existing RAID card.

One the other hand, if your MB has SATA, you can use the 120G on a separate Master channel. Then use your 40G for the Master boot on your first IDE channel. Boards with SATA and ATA capability would be able to have 4 ATA drives and 4 (Maybe, depending on the board) SATA drives. Think of SATA as a replacement for a separate RAID card.

EDIT: I had 8 drives typed, changed to 4 (2 Masters, 2 Slaves each bus)

[rallynavvie]

Many SATA drives still have legacy power connectors. But you will need onboard SATA or a PCI SATA controller in order to use a SATA drive.

[luvvbuzz]

i enquired about the motherboard on this pc i am hoping to buy and it is an
asrock k7vt6 details on asrock site http://www.asrock.com/product/product_k7vt6.htm
it says # SerialATA, RAID 0,1, JBOD, SATA HDD_Hotplug and on the site i am buying my system from it is an option to have a sata drive instead of an ide supplied with it, so i would think the motherboard supports it. its not the best motherboard in the world, but it does all i want it to, and this computer i am using now will become my 'workhorse' computer for the labourus jobs. but i am not sure what they mean by sata hdd hotplug, is that an adapter or a proper sata connection? i appreciate you taking time to post your comments, it can be quite a task buying a new computer, especially when new stuff keeps coming out all the time to confuse ya

[luvvbuzz]

so bearing in mind the motherboard is it worth me spending an extra £10 for a sata drive or not?

[budz]

Personally I'd get a ASUS motherboard.

[luvvbuzz]

i am ordering a system which is based upon that motherboard, i cant have an asus motherboard in it because that is not the system they build. so if anybody wants to post an answer to my question which was, bearing in mind the motherboard the system is made from, see above post for link, is it worth
paying an extra £10 for a sata hardrive or is it not worth bothering with?

[whomacuddy]

It really depends on the Hardware you intend to pair the Hard Disk up with although SATA is faster (150 Megabytes/second) compared to Conventional ATA (Usually 100/133 Megabytes/second) this is only the speed that is possible between the Buffer and the Controller and not the actual Hard Disk Sustained Read Speed which is typically for 7,200rpm ATA Drives about 50-80 Megabytes/second . For myself I use 2 Maxtor 80Gb ATA133 Drives running at 133Megabytes/second which is only slighty slower than my other 120Mb SATA Drive at 150Megabytes/second

[Solarflair]

sata is good but i wouldnt jump on it unless you have an option to raid it.

[redwudz]

I would go for the SATA drive. As I mentioned, probably the future replacement for ATA drives. My guess on HOTPLUG is that they mean the drive can can be removable (Not the boot drive, though.) Similar to unplugging a USB drive when the computer is still on. Not much use unless you have a drive in a removable tray. This is fairly common on server systems where the drives can be changed out while the computer is on.

[ViRaL1]

For a little more, I always keep my options open. I'd say get SATA.