SATA vs PATA

S

schapman

Gawd
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Oct 23, 2003
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just wondering.. im in the market for a new hard drive (my IBM deathstar 40GB is getting full too easy.. and for the 3rd time seems to be dying).. and i was just wondering.. is it worth the few extra bucks for a SATA drive (i have a nf7-s to plug it into) ive been looking at:

Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA HD w/8MB Buffer $162 or
Seagate 120GB 7200RPM ATA100 EIDE HD w/8Mb Buffer $142 so is the $20 worth it???
 
Only real difference right now is that the SATA cable is a lot thinner than the PATA cables. Theoretical peak transfer speeds are higher for SATA drives, but right now, PATA and SATA don't really break the ATA/66 barrier anyways.

If you want a smaller cable, so with SATA, otherwise, I'd still go with PATA for the lower cost.
 
I think if you really pressed Seagate, they'd admit those two drives are identical, except for the external interface. All the internal workings are probably the same. I'd get the cheaper one simply because it's cheaper...no other reason.
 
I'd say that if you are planning on upgrading later this year or 2005 and know you'll want to keep the drive, SATA might be a better choice.

Soon PATA will become obsolete and mobo manufacturers will probably not include them on their high end platforms. This will leave you with a 120 HD you can't use.
 
I doubt that.. consider all the optical drives still using PATA interface, and all the IDE drives still for sale. I think standard PATA interfacing will be included on high-end motherboards for years to come.

I am thinking that unless you get a raptor, from what I'm seeing the SATA drives are just PATA drives with SATA bridge IC's on teh PCB, and they don't actually outperform their PATA brothers.

someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going to be buying a new HDD in the next couple days as well, so this is also a consideration for me.
 
The upcoming Intel chipsets only have one PATA channel*, and more than likely you will be using your optical drives with it, so I have to agree that your future upgrading plans are an important consideration.


edit:
*Intel is probably doing that in an attempt to push PATA completely off the motherboard with the next gen chipsets.

Of course, you could always buy a PATA controller card, so maybe it's not that important :p
 
well. i recently got the nf7-s and right now ive got my 40Gb hooked up w/ the adapter to the SATA (cause the ata133 cable they give u is super long and i only needed to run it like 4 inches), so i easily have the space for it w/ 2 pata channels and another sata one free. but if the speed stays the same.. i think ill just go w/ the pata, unless im gonna notice any benefit form the sata
 
Serial ATA raid is more widely found on new motherboards than Parallel ATA raid. For that reason alone, I'd *might* go SATA. But some of the newer SATA drives area actually slower (maybe 1-2%) than their PATA counterparts cos it's the identical drive just with a converter slapped onto it...
 
Originally posted by KevC
...cos it's the identical drive just with a converter slapped onto it...
Click to expand...

There is a notable exception to this... the Seagate V is actually a pure SATA design, not just a PATA->SATA conversion. Not that it really matters much, given the inability of current drives to utilize the full speed of the "old" ATA-133 standard, even in max burst rates. Now if the drives could pipe data as fast as Twista can rap, we would be all set.

-SEAL
 
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