Serial ATA

[Nija]

Ok. I don't anything about Serial ATA. If I got a motherboard with Serial ATA on it, I assume, that I would NOT be able to use my standard IDE hard drives/cd anythings on it correct?

If a board does have Serial ATA, does it also support regular E-IDE/IDE, is there some specification that I should look for so I don't inadvertenly screw myself over?

I had been looking at some of the deluxe models of the nForce2 (obviously with Serial ATA) and I wanted to if I would be able to just not use the serial ata part, or what?

Please, everyone school me, so I can make some enlightened decisions.

Thanks :D

[hapoo]

I do know that there are S-ATA to IDE adaptors for older drives.

[ribitch]

many boards come with the needed adaptor. From what i hear though, current serial ATA may not work with serial ata drives when they come out. I havent been able to verify it though, so dont quote me on it.

[Heihachi]

That was very useful. I believe I will stay away from that SATA stuff for now then.

[Nija]

Originally posted by chosenfool


like the almighteee hapoo said - there are adapters for older drives to use with the current S-ATA controllers. though thats not exactly the problem you need to know...

the first generation S-ATA we have at the moment doesnt offer that much of a speed increase over the current parallel ATA drives. 133MByte/s maximum transfer rate for parallel compared to just 150MByte/s max transfer rate for Serial ATA. a measly 17MByte/s faster. thats not much of a speed boost to justify getting serial ata drives and controllers.
for now anyway.
The NEXT GENERATION S-ATA is the one you may be more interested in. From what ive read, its bound to dramatically be MUCH faster than what we have now (and its noticeable). The target is around 300 to 600MByte/s. now THATS a speed boost.

so save yourself some dough, wait for THOSE drives, and if you really want faster drives NOW, get the 8MB buffer IDE drives, or simply get a 10K or 15Krpm SCSI drive. Both are getting REAL cheap now.

I was doing a little google research, and although I couldn't find much in the way of actual information (found lots of boards though :rolleyes: ) I found a European dell site that said it was being rolled out in three plans, like you stated above. but of course, being dell n all, it didn't answer any of the questions I had :P

I really just wanted to see if I bought one of the nForce2 boards around january, if i would have to do a major upgrade, which apprantly I don't. yay! thanks for the information all :D I look forward to the incoming speedy revisions :D

[LegendKiller]

Ok,
From my point of view, SATA is a sham in almost every respect. It does provide a "speed" boost, but that is ONLY with burst speeds, which only makes up ~10% of the total speed equation for your drive. I should be getting the Seagate Barracuda V SATA drive sometime in the next month, so I will be able to test then.

What needs to happen is that the drives themselves need to get faster. Simply adding cache does not do a whole lot to the total speed of the drive. Saying 300/600mb SATA is going to be awesome is like saying Ultra320 scsi with 1 7200rpm Barracuda ES2 drive is "awesome". When and if there are 10k IDE drives will be the only time that SATA will benefit users to any great extent. Otherwise its just a nice way to reduce cable clutter.

Also, the SATA standard is finalized. All sata ports in all motherboards will work with all future sata drives.


LK

[Heihachi]

Originally posted by LegendKiller
Also, the SATA standard is finalized. All sata ports in all motherboards will work with all future sata drives.

So then the earlier post about how these SATA controllers on the mobos offered right now are false?

If that's the case then it's wise to go w/ mobo's w/ onboard SATA right?

[LegendKiller]

Yes, any board you buy today will be ok in the future for SATA.


LK

[Heihachi]

Always trust gotapex people.. hehe