NTB new HD...stick with IDE or get a SATA drive?

[zero2dash]

I have 2 HD currently (both 80 gig...primary is OS and secondary is storage)...the storage drive is nearly full and I'll be shopping for a new HD pretty soon. Both of the drives I have right now are IDE but my mobo supports SATA. (I almost went with SATA initially when I built this computer but opted for IDE since SATA had a higher price and was relatively "new" on the market).

That being said...would it be worth going to SATA or sticking to IDE? From the (miniscule) information I know about SATA, I believe it's faster than IDE transfer-wise, but I don't know much more than that.

Trying to pull up a comparison on Google left me with more questions than answers. :) I've seen comments that mixing SATA + IDE can prove troublesome...which, if that's the case - I'd stick with IDE because I can't afford to buy 3 new drives just to switch to SATA.

Can anyone give pros/cons? TIA :D

[Jeffbx]

SATA! Get yourself a Raptor & make that your boot drive. You'll see a noticable improvement in boot speed & general performance.

SATA & IDE mix fine on my machine - I boot off of a SATA Raptor, and I have 1 SATA data drive, 1 IDE data drive & 2 IDE DVD drives. You just have to be careful in BIOS to specify whether you're booting off of IDE or SATA.

[Grimm]

The cost differential has narrowed significantly.
You won't see any significant difference in speed though. The primary limitation on data transfer is physically reading and writing the data, not the transfer speed. You might see slightly better burst rates, but not sustaned reads and writes.
NCQ (Native Command Queing) is what can make SATA drives faster. The SATA I standard does not support NCQ but some SATA I drives and controlers do. It is part of the SATA II standard. It ques up reads and writes in order of their physical location on the drive, reducing head movement time and resulting in maximizing of the speed of the drive.

Get a SATA drive for forward compatability. A 250GB drive isn't going to run you that much. Even better if it supports NCQ. Your motherboard might not, but your next probably will. I wouldn't invest the money in a Raptor though.

[Bires]

I got yer benchmarks right here! (http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.aspx?articleid=745)

I have the SATA2 Maxtor Diamondmax 10 250. Honestly, the performance increase above my PATA DM9+ is nill. The benchmarks are a hair faster, but real-world performance (game loading) didn't really change that much.


PS: Most newer drives are sent in acoustic management mode. If you buy a maxtor, I can give you the software to turn this off. The drive is not any louder, and the benchies jumped about 5%.

PSS: Most hardware review sites say that NCQ (in it's current usage) is actually SLOWER than without it.

[bachviet]

Sata

[modena]

why not get a raptor? is the speed of thus unnoticable as well?

[Jeffbx]

I never benchmarked it ('cuz I hate doing them), but when I switched from plain IDE to the 10K RPM Raptor, I saw a noticable improvement in boot time & drive performance. For example - when I edit/print pictures, I always copy them to a new directory & leave the originals untouched. With the IDE, when I copied a 400MB directory to a different folder on the same drive, it would take about a minute. With the Raptor, it takes about 15-20 seconds. I know, not scientific at all & you should probably question my actual times, but I'm happy with the results!