I have a "hard" decision here. I'm planning to get a new hard disk but I’m not too sure on choice.
I’m using PATA drives now. Is it good for me to be mixing SATA and PATA on the same motherboard? Will I notice any difference in speed if I use a SATA drive as my main drive, compared to a PATA drive?
Sam Yoong, Kensington, SA
If increased speed is your only real motivation for changing, then you’re probably up for a bit of disappointment. SATA drives don’t currently provide very much improvement in data transfer speed over PATA drives. The fact that they also need to interact with the system’s PCI bus creates further limitations, and no real speed improvements are currently evident.
Their biggest benefit is the fact that the drive connector cable is smaller, allowing improved system ventilation and cooling. SATA drives can also be set up to be ‘hot-swappable’, enabling them to be connected and disconnected from a system when it’s in use. When the PCI-Express system bus becomes mainstream in the near future, we might see an improvement to the situation, but that time isn’t with us yet.
But you might choose to add a SATA drive to your system regardless. If you’re running out of IDE connectors, for example, it might be your best option. You might even wish to add a couple of them and make use of the RAID technology that is often included with the implementation of SATA on motherboards.
Mixing SATA and PATA drives in the same system should not cause problems. Not insofar as conflict issues go, in any case. Where problems arise for many people is in the initial configuration of a system. BIOS settings can get confusing. Careful reading of the motherboard manual’s BIOS Setup section, and a preparedness to ‘look up’ terms that you might be unfamiliar with, should avert most problems.
Most problems encountered during setting up fall into the categories addressed by these two questions I found in Western Digital’s Knowledge Base.
It really shouldn’t be a problem. Read the documentation first (including the documents you may find on installation CDs) and you should be fine.
Oh yeah! Despite what I said earlier about there being very little speed difference, I’d still advise you to configure the SATA drive as your ‘main’ drive. Every little bit helps when it comes to performance, and the ‘little bit’ you don’t usually notice might turn out to be the ‘little bit’ that makes a difference some day!
Cheers,
Terry O'ShanassyDonPosted: 27/12/2009
re: SATA or PATA?
and in addition, PATA consumes 5volts and rather has great interferance rate while SATA uses voltages but was divided to polarities so that filtering noises wil be easy.
in most PRACTICAL way, SATA is best for computers, flexible.
They wouldn'y face out IDE PATA HDDs if they don't have much of a difference..would they?
(Unusual assertions there Don. -PZ)
BungArmPosted: 29/12/2004
re: SATA or PATA?
It wasn't to long ago i got a new computer and wondered if i should get PATA (133) or SATA.
Seriously, i can not notice a big enough difference between them. Spend the money on HDD cache. the more the better in my opinion!
SATA or PATA? who cares, just get a drive with a high level of cache to notice or benchmark an improvement.
Jon (IT Tech for QLD Government)Posted: 08/04/2004
re: SATA or PATA?
Depending on whether you're using PATA 100 or 133, SATA might actually give you a considerable boost. As the name suggests PATA 100 can only give a maximum of approx. 100Mb/s transfer. 133 can give you approx. 133Mb/s transfer. Meanwhile, SATA are configured to a usual max transfer rate of approx. 150Mb/s. Also to the fact that they are slightly faster, they are configurable into the RAID position. This allows a much more temperature friendly system.