SATA 150 VS IDE as second drive

[DrMarc]

Hello. I am considering adding a SATA hard drive to my system. My mother board supports SATA150. I understand that the 300 drives are backwards compatible which I assume means that the transfer rate will be 150 not 300. My question is this: My primary drive is and ATA100. With the editing application (Pinnicale Studio V10.7) on the main drive, is a second drive running at 150 much of an advantage over another IDE drive?

[edDV]

Hello. I am considering adding a SATA hard drive to my system. My mother board supports SATA150. I understand that the 300 drives are backwards compatible which I assume means that the transfer rate will be 150 not 300. My question is this: My primary drive is and ATA100. With the editing application (Pinnicale Studio V10.7) on the main drive, is a second drive running at 150 much of an advantage over another IDE drive?

The reality:

Those specs are for burst rates from the disk buffer. No hard drive runs at those speeds. Typical sustained video transfer rates for PATA/SATA150/SATA300 are 30-55MB/s (160-440Mb/s) for all. The speed varies for inner tracks vs. outer tracks on the drive.

Even the fast Raptor drives run well within ATA133 or SATA150. Video is a sustained access and as such doesn't benefit from cache access like a data server so the faster cache access goes unused.

Another rule of thumb, assume a USB2 external hard drive will run approximately half the speed of an internal PATA/SATA drive. An external Firewire drive will run slightly faster than USB2 but also with less CPU activity.

[DrMarc]

Thank you EdDV. I'm not exactly technologically illiterate, but tech specs get mind boggling! Your comment about the external USB vs the internal drives was most helpful. I have been using an external USB2 for storage and have to unplug everything else that is USB to get it to keep up with the capture rate. One of my external drives is also Firewire (400, not 800). It looks like it makes the most sence for me to go internal. Thanks again.

[edDV]

Thank you EdDV. I'm not exactly technologically illiterate, but tech specs get mind boggling! Your comment about the external USB vs the internal drives was most helpful. I have been using an external USB2 for storage and have to unplug everything else that is USB to get it to keep up with the capture rate. One of my external drives is also Firewire (400, not 800). It looks like it makes the most sence for me to go internal. Thanks again.

Internal rules if you want speed. It doesn't make much difference ATA100/133 or SATA 150/300. External SATA will run full speed if that is an option.

Current USB2 motherboards do better than you report at keeping devices separate. But still speed is half. Speed only applies to copying files in most cases. Everything else runs slower.

[RabidDog]

and have to unplug everything else that is USB

That could be because your other devices are usb1.1 , this might be causing your hub or usb ports to drop to the lower speed when these devices are plugged in. Warning tho! all sata 300 drives should be compatible with a sata 150 interface, however this is not the case, I think some nvidia mbobs with sata I interface have a problem with some sata II drives.