SATA-II explained

good guide thanks - have some stars!!

After reading various arcticles relating to the benefits of SATA-II (Custom PC) I'm a little disappointed reading this. I'm confused as to why the manufacturers are marketing these drives running at 3.0Gbp/s transfer rate. False marketing maybe?

I've recently bought the Samsung spinpoint and i'm still unsure what speed this is running at.. How do you check this?
 
[pimp mode]have a look in the sticky theres some hard drive tools at the end of the first post, have a go with HDTach for now see what that gives you. [/pimp mode]
:D
 
Exentia said:
[pimp mode]have a look in the sticky theres some hard drive tools at the end of the first post, have a go with HDTach for now see what that gives you. [/pimp mode]
:D
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Guys, if you feel uncomfortable with his pimping, let me know - I know the proper authorities. :D.

But yeah, unless you have a nForce4 board (where you can just check the drivers in Device Manager), the only way to know is something like HDTach. Interesting question though, and will be added to FAQ. Thanks Huddy!
 
Reading it again I'm not sure if the 3gbps idea is clear enough. Thinking about it, the post seems to be aimed at people with normal sata setups who expect 3gbps out of the box. This creats a bit of confusion for people like me who have never used sata and are looking into sata-II who will get 3gbps without problems. This bit in particular made me think (fifth orange heading):
smids said:
The 3.0Gbp/s transfer rate would only come into play if you had a controller which supports the full 3.0Gbps transfer...
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This (fairly obvious I guess) piece of info is hidden away, but is what people with 3gb mobos or whatever are looking for. Since you explain about 3gb being an optional extra and sata-1 backward-compatility first, this obvious point is slightly overlooked.
I guess I'm suggesting you make it obvious right at the start that people with motherboards that support 3gbps transfer rates will get 3gbps out of their 3gbps drives, phew.
Hasty edit: Or am I completely wrong here? Can drives actually read that much data at 7200rpm?
 
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Fair enough, I'll look at it again tomorrow and perhaps split the question up. Thanks for the input.

EDIT:

Basically it can be split into parts. No-one will benefit from the increased transfer rate of 300MB/s (aka 3.0Gbp/s) unless they have a RAID0 etc.

A single drive at 7200RPM can only produce about 55-60MB/s. Raptor 10K about 60-75MB/s - depends.

A 3.0gbp/s drive will work on all motherboards with SATA (1 or 2) but may require a jumper setting for SATA1 controllers (to force 150MB/s [aka 1.5gbp/s] transfer rate].

A 3.0gbp/s drive will work just fine on a 3.0gbp/s capable mobo leaving the owner with nothing to do (except Hitachi's which require the full rate to be switched on).

It does make sense to me, but it was aimed at exactly members like yourself, so I haven't done a good enough job. I will fix it to make it more clear.
 
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That makes sense. I was being silly, sorry :) .

I do have a question though. Would 4 disks be needed in raid 0 for 3gb/s? Or more? Or fewer? Where do you get 4 from?

Also a good link is this from hardcoreware.net. The benchmarks show your point very nicely.

Good work
 
joeyjojo said:
That makes sense. I was being silly, sorry :) .

I do have a question though. Would 4 disks be needed in raid 0 for 3gb/s? Or more? Or fewer? Where do you get 4 from?

Also a good link is this from hardcoreware.net. The benchmarks show your point very nicely.

Good work
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Thanks for the link - I'll include it somehow.

About your question - my answer is that it was really a guestimate. I was thinking about a 4 x 74GB raptor RAID. Each individual raptor can hit about 70Mb/s so 280mb/s in RAID0. Then take inefficiencies into account and you have about 250MB/s average read. As you can see though, you need more than 2 drives to breach the 1.5gbp/s limit of SATA1. My 2 raptor 74GB drives in RAID0 have an average read of 128MB/s.

You can have any number, but the point is that no benefit it reaped over SATA1 from having such a controller/drive unless you use more than 2 disks in a RAID0.
 
Quick question. I am planning a new build soon and was thinking along the lines of a raptor originally but then read some things and decided to go with 2 x 160gb SATA2 Hitachi Deskstars.

However from reading this sticky, would I be better off going for 4 x 80gb Deskstars instead?

Plus I also have an existing Maxtor 120gb SATA1 drive I planned on keeping for storing files like drivers, mp3's etc, would I still be able to have this?
 
Monstermunch said:
Quick question. I am planning a new build soon and was thinking along the lines of a raptor originally but then read some things and decided to go with 2 x 160gb SATA2 Hitachi Deskstars.

However from reading this sticky, would I be better off going for 4 x 80gb Deskstars instead?

Plus I also have an existing Maxtor 120gb SATA1 drive I planned on keeping for storing files like drivers, mp3's etc, would I still be able to have this?
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Well, it really does depend. Are you planning on RAID0'ing 4 drives? I strongly advise against this because the chances of failure is up 4 fold but so long as you just need the speed and no important data then I don't see why not. Make sure you hve enough ports. Using a maxtor as a storage drive :eek: :p.

I do actually have 4 x 80GB Deskstars in a RAID0+1 - RAID0 array of 2 drives mirrored to another RAID0 array of 2 drives. Thus I have 160GB of extremely fast, very reliable data and no longer need to worry about drive failures on my windows install which can even be used to storage. This is what I suggest - RAID0 is fast enough on its own with 2 drives, let alone more, but this way you have reduncancy.

You would however at least be one of the few to take advantage of the 3.0gbp/s transfer rate of SATA-II (SATA controller permitting). Unless you need 320GB of RAID0, I would go with 160GB of RAID0+1 which makes it faster, cheaper and more reliable than a 150GB raptor. :)
 
Thanks for that. I don't need 320gb of storage but the more the better if you know where i'm coming from. The main reason would be for speed :D

I am planning on using the DFI nF4 Ultra-D Mobo which does support the 3gb/s SATAII option.

SO just to clarify, putting it into my language with 4 x 80gb deskstars I could either run all 4 in raid 0 (320gb total) or run 2 in raid 0+1 and mirror with 2 in raid 0 (160gb total) with the 160gb mirrored option being faster and more secure?
 
Monstermunch said:
Thanks for that. I don't need 320gb of storage but the more the better if you know where i'm coming from. The main reason would be for speed :D

I am planning on using the DFI nF4 Ultra-D Mobo which does support the 3gb/s SATAII option.

SO just to clarify, putting it into my language with 4 x 80gb deskstars I could either run all 4 in raid 0 (320gb total) or run 2 in raid 0+1 and mirror with 2 in raid 0 (160gb total) with the 160gb mirrored option being faster and more secure?
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Yes - but dont forget this will use all the ports up - you'll need a PCI sata card (very cheap) or an IDE drive as a storage drive :).

I actually run 4x80GB Hitachi's in a RAID0+1 on that exact board as you may see from my sig. If you find the hitachi's loud at all, I believe there is also an acoustic management utility in the Hitachi Drive tools which allows you to run it up or down (with obvious performance impacts). Currently I get about 97MB/s sustained read, 400MB/s burst and 12.7ms access time for reference.
 
Monstermunch said:
One extra thing i've just thought of. How does the slower access time impact the performance?
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Very, very little. There is only the tiniest overhead when using a RAID, whilst all drives settle on the correct bit of data. This is miniscule. Of course a raptor is faster but you wouldn't notice.
 
ok, well ive been after a new hard drive for a while now and ive been offered a 300gb maxtor which is sata, but ive also been offered a seagate barracuda 120gig 8mb ata 100 which is damn near a match for my current 120gig seagate barracuda, only dif is mine has 2mb cache.

so, i can go with the maxtor, or i can raid the 2 120`s which do you think would be faster? and how the hell do i raid 2 IDE drives as ive never used raid before...

p.s. i realise i am increasing my chances of a HDD failure by raiding but i will be using norton ghost and as both drives are seagates and not maxtor or Hitachi, im inclined to trust them more...
 
Hmm, which version is the maxtor (DM9, 10, Maxline 2, maxline 3)? Now, one thing I'm not sure about is RAID'ing drives with different cache sizes. It should work, but I don't know how it will affect performance. Also, RAID'ing IDE drives apparently gives poor performance. I'm not sure why but I read this on the nV nForce forums. The Maxtor seems the way to go for space but again, recent reliability issues must be taken into account. Your choice is like that of a rock or a hard place. Also, what is the use of the drive?

PS - I'm subscribed to this thread and see all replies ;).
 
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