What is meant by this ?
- Thread starter jamjar
- Start date
IDE is a slower interface, but normally this doesn't really matter due to the drive's data transfer speed not "filling" it so to speak.
SATA cables are also a HELL of a lot smaller and tidier to use and can be hot swapped (i.e. plugged in/out while the PC is on).
SATA cables are also a HELL of a lot smaller and tidier to use and can be hot swapped (i.e. plugged in/out while the PC is on).
Technically IDE is simply "Integrated Drive Electronics" ie the controller circuitry is on the drive as opposed to on a controller board as was the case with previous (<1990) MFM & ESDI drives. Now however IDE has become synonomous with parallel interface ATA drives (PATA) which use a 40pin connector and 40 or later 80 way cable to transfer the data in parallel as a stream of 16 bit words. Due to the crosstalk generated by the high frequency signalling needed to increase data rates the PATA standard topped out at 133Mb/s.
To provide improved bandwidth the Serial ATA (SATA) standard was developed. By sending data as a serial stream of single bits there is no crosstalk issue to contend with so the signal bandwidth can be increased easily. Early SATA implementations run at 150Mb/s although the SATA300 standard has increased this to 300Mb/s. This is commonly known as SATA2 although this is not a recognised name, SATA2 was the name given to the committee discussing improvements to the SATA standard but it's stuck as a name for the 300Mb/s speed.
It's important to realise that these figures are all theoretical maximums, there are no physical hard disks available at present which can generate a sustained transfer rate of 133Mb/s, let alone 300Mb/s.
Which is better? There is nothing that PATA can do which SATA can't so it's really down to the advantages of SATA:
To provide improved bandwidth the Serial ATA (SATA) standard was developed. By sending data as a serial stream of single bits there is no crosstalk issue to contend with so the signal bandwidth can be increased easily. Early SATA implementations run at 150Mb/s although the SATA300 standard has increased this to 300Mb/s. This is commonly known as SATA2 although this is not a recognised name, SATA2 was the name given to the committee discussing improvements to the SATA standard but it's stuck as a name for the 300Mb/s speed.
It's important to realise that these figures are all theoretical maximums, there are no physical hard disks available at present which can generate a sustained transfer rate of 133Mb/s, let alone 300Mb/s.
Which is better? There is nothing that PATA can do which SATA can't so it's really down to the advantages of SATA:
- Hot swap capability for servers etc
- 1 drive per cable simplifies installation
- Thinner cables, easier to route and not susceptible to crosstalk
- Longer cables, 1m vs 45cm
- External native devices (mainly due to smaller longer cables)
- Server specifics like NCQ, Staggered Spin Up and Spread Spectrum Clocking
Yeah almost any new motherboard on sale today will have at least 4 and in some cases up to 8 SATA2 ports.
PATA ports however are becoming an endangered species, 1 is all you're likely to get now and on some Intel boards it's no longer part of the chipset and an add on controller chip has had to be provided for legacy support.
PATA ports however are becoming an endangered species, 1 is all you're likely to get now and on some Intel boards it's no longer part of the chipset and an add on controller chip has had to be provided for legacy support.
