Is SATA harddrive worth the premium for video editing ?

[SingSing]

I am in the process of updating my desktop, and have look at both traditional PATA and the new SATA hard drive.

The SATA has a smaller cable, and promise better speed.

Is SATA speed improvement significant when authouring, or compiling a 4.7GB DVD movie ?

[waheed]

SATA drives do have slightly improved speeds, but it is not significant. In actual cases, you will not really notice much of the difference compared with PATA, unless its a 10,000 RPM drive (WD Raptor).

Howver, if prices for SATA drives are similar with PATA, then by all means, go with SATA.

SATA has hot plug capabilities, No need for Jumper Configurations (Master/Slave), uses smaller cables, runs alot cooler than PATA drives and consumes less power than PATA.

[bmwracer]

I am in the process of updating my desktop, and have look at both traditional PATA and the new SATA hard drive.

The SATA has a smaller cable, and promise better speed.

Is SATA speed improvement significant when authouring, or compiling a 4.7GB DVD movie ?

In my experience, it has minimal effect... The HD only involves I/O transfers to and from disc to memory.

The authoring and compiling is about CPU speed and power.

[ROF]

I am in the process of updating my desktop, and have look at both traditional PATA and the new SATA hard drive.

The SATA has a smaller cable, and promise better speed.

Is SATA speed improvement significant when authouring, or compiling a 4.7GB DVD movie ?

You will see minimal improvement while authoring or compiling a film. Where you will see improvement is moving significant amounts of small files around, access/seek times, and overall system improvement. You will reduce power consumption and reduce residual case heating due to lower power for drive operations which reduces heat given off by the drive and because the cabling is smaller you will improve air flow within your case thus allowing for a cooler overall system structure.

Is it worth the premium? Well considering most SATA1 drives are similiar priced as their IDE relatives I'd say for the factors listed above it's definitely worth the investment.

[bmwracer]

You will see minimal improvement while authoring or compiling a film. Where you will see improvement is moving significant amounts of small files around, access/seek times, and overall system improvement. You will reduce power consumption and reduce residual case heating due to lower power for drive operations which reduces heat given off by the drive and because the cabling is smaller you will improve air flow within your case thus allowing for a cooler overall system structure.

This is true, but unless you've got a high-end system with lotsa drives and really fast CPU, the heat issues are relatively insignificant.

Is it worth the premium? Well considering most SATA1 drives are similiar priced as their IDE relatives I'd say for the factors listed above it's definitely worth the investment.

The prices are pretty close, but I've seen a lotta great deals (with rebates, unfortunately) from Fry's on large PATA drives (250/300/400GB) that SATA drives can't match...

[Morse2]

Hi SingSing;

Each has their advantages.

1. The master/slave relationship on drives is actually advantageous in that it causes the 'master' drives to spin up first, with the 'slaves' following. With about 25 watts req'd to spin up each drive it can become significant in a system with a lot of storage.

2. SATA is the 'future' - by this, I mean that both Intel and AMD are in the process of phasing out IDE native connectivity from the mobo specs they hand out. IIRC, Intel has already dropped it completely from their upcoming specification and AMD is dropping the requirement to one IDE connector in their spec for boards to accompany AM2.

3. SATA connectors tend to be loose in my experience, which can cause problems due to the stiffness of the SATA cabling. I personally prefer IDE's with either high quality round cables or in some cases where you can 'fold' ribbon cable and tuck it out of the way, the traditional ribbon cables.

4. Power supply connectivity - if your PS doesn't have enough of the new SATA connectors, you'll have to use adaptors. CAREFUL! I've seen some adaptors that would fit the Molex connectors either way, regardless of 'keying' - make CERTAIN that those adaptors go 'yellow to yellow' rather than just assembling them by touch.

5. Some SATA drives are actually still using PATA electronics with a SATA interface built right into the drive's controller board. Others are truly "native".

6.In terms of speed, there's no discernable real world difference in my experience between the 2 kinds of drives. My server currently holds 5 IDE drives and 6 SATA, yet I've never noticed any performance difference when capturing, editing, or even performing multi GByte video file moves.

7. For hot swap drive bays, SATA is the standard, so if you've got your heart set on that, ask no further.

8. For RAID5, you can go either way. I've seen RAID5 cards that support up to 8 IDE drives, and SATA's up to 12 (expect to shell out the big bucks for that kind of thing though - some RAID5 server cards are over $600....). Remember that on a RAID5 array, you lose one drive's worth of storage capacity to parity bits. If your heart is set on the new Western Digital "RE" series with their 1 million hours MTBF rating (careful - it just means that with a large number of drives you divide the MTBF by the # of drives and figure you'll have to replace one drive at those intervals, on average) then you HAVE to go with a RAID array that has built-in error correction (NOT raid 0!) for data safety.

If you're going to build a large, powerful video editing system, I'd suggest you let your wallet do the talking and go with whatever will be the cheapest to implement that will do what you want it to - mixing drives within a JBOD system definitly works fine! RAID5 is nice, but I'm living in a JBOD environment now and it works too (nicer from the standpoint that I don't have to rebuild an array when replacing or upgrading drives).

Good luck on whatever you choose!
Morse

[bmwracer]

6.In terms of speed, there's no discernable real world difference in my experience between the 2 kinds of drives. My server currently holds 5 IDE drives and 6 SATA, yet I've never noticed any performance difference when capturing, editing, or even performing multi GByte video file moves.

My thoughts exactly... And the was the main crux of his question.

[SingSing]

This is a very comprehensve reply, let me try my best to work thru these points from a person have not setup a SATA Harddisk yet :

1. The Master and Slave is no-longer by jumper, so is it daisy chain ? First one is the master ?

2. My new MOBO has both SATA and PATA interface. But hp/dell/compaq often only have one or the other ( cost saving I assumed ).

3. I was not aware of this, thank you.

4. I assume SATA is using both old molex and a newer power connector, is this true ?

5. I see quite a few of these available, I assume these type offer no speed improvment, and consumed more power because of the adapter.

6. This is the general agreement here so far.

7. I actually use PATA cartidge housing for most of my HD ( They can be swap, but not hot-swap ).

8. Actually, My impression is RAID will really speed the disk transfer rate. What's your take on RAID, and recommendation ?

[JerryB]

I am in the process of updating my desktop, and have look at both traditional PATA and the new SATA hard drive.

The SATA has a smaller cable, and promise better speed.

Is SATA speed improvement significant when authouring, or compiling a 4.7GB DVD movie ?

this is my opinion only....
1. first... you always have to compare it somthing to get the true idea if something better...
2. as it turns out serial end up being faster....
3. right now there are 2 type of sata , a level 1 (the orginals smile) and level 2 ... (not withstanding manufacturers differences in quality)
Now the level 1 sata have about a 150 bandwidth.. now from test.s.. data level one are a little bit faster than your ata 133's and that could be cause of the additional cache on the sata level one....!!!
however they came with the level 2 which have i believe 300 m bandwidth.. and they should be much faster than the ata's
note: in the next year or two there going to be increasing the bandwith quite a bit with the sata.. so your going to be seeing level 3 and 4 and 5, smile.... I think there shooting for a 1 gig bandwidth.
Well those are my thoughts...

[waheed]

This is a very comprehensve reply, let me try my best to work thru these points from a person have not setup a SATA Harddisk yet :

1. The Master and Slave is no-longer by jumper, so is it daisy chain ? First one is the master ?

2. My new MOBO has both SATA and PATA interface. But hp/dell/compaq often only have one or the other ( cost saving I assumed ).

3. I was not aware of this, thank you.

4. I assume SATA is using both old molex and a newer power connector, is this true ?

5. I see quite a few of these available, I assume these type offer no speed improvment, and consumed more power because of the adapter.

6. This is the general agreement here so far.

7. I actually use PATA cartidge housing for most of my HD ( They can be swap, but not hot-swap ).

8. Actually, My impression is RAID will really speed the disk transfer rate. What's your take on RAID, and recommendation ?

1 .There is no jumper configuration. Hence, no master/slave settings. EAch SATA port has its own channel so you can think of this as each SATA hard disk being as Master.

2. Most MB come with both.

3. Never had a problem with SATA cables coming loose, but you can always use SATA cables with latches:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1469982#1469982

4. Some drives come with both SATA Power and Molex Power (mainly the WD) so you can use either (but NEVER use both simultaneuosly), but not all. Seagate drives only come with SATA Power but not Molex.

5. No speed impovement for those with PATA devices.

6. Unless its a 10,000 RPM drive, agreed.

7. Hot Plug advantage.

8. Never used RAID, so cant comment.

[edDV]

I am in the process of updating my desktop, and have look at both traditional PATA and the new SATA hard drive.

The SATA has a smaller cable, and promise better speed.

Is SATA speed improvement significant when authouring, or compiling a 4.7GB DVD movie ?

this is my opinion only....
1. first... you always have to compare it somthing to get the true idea if something better...
2. as it turns out serial end up being faster....
3. right now there are 2 type of sata , a level 1 (the orginals smile) and level 2 ... (not withstanding manufacturers differences in quality)
Now the level 1 sata have about a 150 bandwidth.. now from test.s.. data level one are a little bit faster than your ata 133's and that could be cause of the additional cache on the sata level one....!!!
however they came with the level 2 which have i believe 300 m bandwidth.. and they should be much faster than the ata's
note: in the next year or two there going to be increasing the bandwith quite a bit with the sata.. so your going to be seeing level 3 and 4 and 5, smile.... I think there shooting for a 1 gig bandwidth.
Well those are my thoughts...

The actual HDD hardware performance is lower than ATA-133 spec except maybe a short read from cache. Sustained transfer rates are important for video and for most any consumer "video" project, a ATA-133 drive is plenty fast. Servers and video games need fast bursts of data, video needs sustained performance.
http://storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html

"Uncompressed" capture is at the edge of single drive sustained rates and may need partition placement or use of huffyuv lossless compression (CPU load) to fit single drive transfer rates. PATA vs SATA makes no real difference.

RAID is required only to support multi SDI (uncompressed SMPTE-259M) "reatime" hardware video cards.

[GKar]

You would probably see more speed in upgrading to a dual core processor/motherboard rather than the hard disk. (Authoring & compiling DVD's)

[bmwracer]

You would probably see more speed in upgrading to a dual core processor/motherboard rather than the hard disk.

Total agreement. *thumbs up*

[redwudz]

SingSing, to answer by number:

1. No they are all 'Master' as each is on has it's own controller.

2. Most all MB's will have a PATA connection because that's what DVD burners and CD-RW use. There are a few SATA DVD burners on the market, and you may see more, then they could eliminate the PATA interface.

3. There are clips and modified connectors to keep the SATA cables in place. I assume because of the 'hot plug' capability, they are using the regular connector. They can come unplugged easily.

4. Depends on the drive. Some come with both power connectors, some only with the SATA power connector. Adapters are available, sometimes in the box the drive came in. Most newer PS's have SATA power connectors built in.

5. Depends on the drive. All the SATA drives I have used run cooler than PATA drives. The computer bus limits the speed of the drive, but even 133MB/S drives run no where near that speed. I have seen a maybe 10MB/S increase with SATA drives, but that depends on more factors than it just being a SATA drive, so I'm not sure of the reasons or the validity.

6. Refer to #5. They have the capability to run faster, especially SATA II, and may speed up with newer controllers and motherboards.

7. Not sure what you are referring to. If it's a externally removable drive on a slide, you can get them for SATA also. And you can unplug them anytime you want. (As long as the drive is not writing or being written to.)

8. Depends on which RAID you are using. RAID 0 is fast, but if one drive fails, you lose everything. Do you really need lightning speed? Most of my video work I am waiting on the CPU, not the drives. You can save microseconds or even milliseconds with a faster drive, but I quit using RAID 0 as I saw little advantage. Spend the money on a faster CPU.

The above is just my opinion.

[SingSing]

Quote : Not sure what you are referring to. If it's a externally removable drive on a slide, you can get them for SATA also. And you can unplug them anytime you want. (As long as the drive is not writing or being written to.)

In order to hot swap, I assume the drive have to mark as "removiable" in hardware setup, so the drive spec get read after hot swapped in.

The harddisk normally consumes a lot of power ( watt ), don't hot swapped in and out causes power glitches and reset the PC ?

[redwudz]

I think the SATA controller figures they are all 'removable'. At least I have never used any settings different from any other drives. They operate just like a USB device. The OS tells you when they are connected and may tell you when they are unplugged. At least XP handles them well and the unplug/plugin is mostly transparent. To keep from messing things up, you can give them a drive letter like X or Y. Calling one D may confuse things when it's removed if you have a DVD burner as E.

They generally draw a lot less power than a PATA drive. The MB's in most of my computers use a separate regulator for the MB and the CPU and are not affected by spikes on the rest of the system. If your PS is sufficient, you should not have any spikes that would bother anything anyway.

[bmwracer]

Judging from the responses, the answer to your original question appears to be "No."

[Morse2]

Hi SingSing;

The hot swap SATA bays I'm talking about are things like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121913

Checking around, there are a handful of mobile racks available for IDE, though I've never used one of those.

I agree wholeheartedly with Redwudz on the power issue - if your PS is adequate, don't worry about the load of an HDD being switched in or out of the system.

All the best,
Morse

[nzjacob]

Just to add my 2c worth. I used to have a 120gb IDE(PATA) drive. When building a DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author it would take about 25mins to author a whole 4.7gb Disk. I reciently upgraded to a 120gb SATA (keeping the old IDE for storage). With no other changes, no re-installs etc, and still reading/writing on the 1 disk I can get these done in about 16mins.

This is a pretty handy improvement for me. Other than this though, not too many other "Real World" benefits.

[Morse2]

Hi SingSing;

Sorry I missed this one:

>>>...I assume SATA is using both old molex and a newer power connector, is this true ?...<<<

It depends on the HDD maker. Seagates just use the new connector and Western Digitals use both the traditional molex and the newer connector (only use one or the other - NEVER connect both!).

BTW, I can heartily recommend the WD320 in either it's SATA or PATA configuration. It's fast, quiet, and doesn't run too warm. Just make sure you keep the air flowing in your case if you're going to really pack 'em in there!

Good luck and all the best,
Morse

[lordsmurf]

Q: Is SATA harddrive worth the premium for video editing ?
A: Not really.

[SingSing]

Just to add my 2c worth. I used to have a 120gb IDE(PATA) drive. When building a DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author it would take about 25mins to author a whole 4.7gb Disk. I reciently upgraded to a 120gb SATA (keeping the old IDE for storage). With no other changes, no re-installs etc, and still reading/writing on the 1 disk I can get these done in about 16mins.

This is a pretty handy improvement for me. Other than this though, not too many other "Real World" benefits.

25-16/25=36% improvement, I wonder why most of the opions I got on this post, didn't get the same improvement you get ? Unless we are not identify the two type of video work.

1. DVDshrink or DVDdecrytion, mostly CPU time, and DVDdrive to HD.

2. DVDauthoring, that's CPU time and HD to HD transfer.

So from your result, it read as SATA will improve type 2 of video work.

[redwudz]

If you compare a HD with a lot of files on it to a drive with no files, the transfer rate will be different. If you try two empty HDs, one a PATA drive and one a SATA drive, I don't think you will see much difference. I saw maybe 10MB/S difference, but the drive transfer rate is likely influenced by other things.

And the type and brand of HD controller will make a difference, along with the OS and what it's doing at the time. And the brand, speed, and cache size of the drive.

Bottom line and original question:Is SATA hard drive worth the premium for video editing ?

It's not generally a premium in price, so forget that part. For video editing, doesn't make that much difference. But on the other hand, SATA drives use less power, run cooler and have the capability to run faster. That problem is with the interfaces and chipsets more than the drives.

So I would say a qualified 'Yes' to your question. IMO,

[SingSing]

Just to add my 2c worth. I used to have a 120gb IDE(PATA) drive. When building a DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author it would take about 25mins to author a whole 4.7gb Disk. I reciently upgraded to a 120gb SATA (keeping the old IDE for storage). With no other changes, no re-installs etc, and still reading/writing on the 1 disk I can get these done in about 16mins.

This is a pretty handy improvement for me. Other than this though, not too many other "Real World" benefits.

Can you tell us a bit more detail on the SATA HS, MOBO, and even setup, so we can figured out how to get the most out of a SATA drive ?

[SingSing]

Hi SingSing;

The hot swap SATA bays I'm talking about are things like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121913

Checking around, there are a handful of mobile racks available for IDE, though I've never used one of those.

I agree wholeheartedly with Redwudz on the power issue - if your PS is adequate, don't worry about the load of an HDD being switched in or out of the system.

Morse

I just check my office PC, which has two SATA drive under XP pro, I did not see check box for removeable drive. Is the SATA drive is setup as the drive with OS, then most likley it cannot hot swap, becuase it will be constant written to by disk caching.

[waheed]

You cannot Hot Swap a OS drive under any circumstances.