Whats SATA & Ultra ATA? Whats the difference?

[lge.com.au]

Whats SATA & Ultra ATA hard drives? Whats the main differences and pros/cons?

Thanks.

 

[xotix]

sata
= faster
= smaller cable allows more air flow
= single driver per channel [eliminates the need for jumpers]

cons
= can't think of any

u-ata old news.

 

[intercodes]

Redundancy department of redundancy......

http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?threadid=34548&highlight=sata+and+ultra+ata

 

[lge.com.au]

I am purchasing a new PC so I wanted a Seagate Barracuda 80GB and 200GB hard drives. I just looked up on Seagates website about if they have both drives in SATA models and they do so I will purchase these with your advice accordingly. Thanks again "xotix" for your help.

 

[ShoobieRat]

You have to have a mobo that supports SATA. You could get a SATA controller card, but those tend to suck and if you want your SATA drive to be the boot drive, you'll have problems.

 

[Blind_Arrow]

S-ATA also calle serial ATA have following benefits:

- New Technology

- 150MB/s data transfer rate

- thin data wires, you have less clutter in your system as well your air flow inside the casing improves (front to back)

- Hot swapalble (means u can unplug the cables from a running hard drive), but his I dont thik is some advantage, as no body un-plus wires in a running system, speciallly as if the systems casing is closed.

- jumperless, your primary and secondary depends on on what connector u attached the drive.

- spindle rotations can range from 7200rpm to 15000.

- quiet, infact i found them dead silent as conpared to my IDE Maxtor 7200 RPM in previous machine.

Cons: I havent seen any, except that they are little expensive than IDE hard drives:




now Ultra ATA, also called P-ATA (or parrallel ATA), is the advanced form of P-ATA, with data throughput of max 133MB/s

- spindle rotations range from 5400 to max of 7200RPM (in desktop drives)

- Jumper settings allow u to nonimate master and slaves

- 1.5-2 inch thick data cables, difficult to bend at tight corners and blocks efficent air flow.

- cannot be HOT Swapped like S-ATA does, but again, hot swapping to me isnt some real good advantage.

- louder than S-ATA in some cases

and last, good point = cheaper

 

[ShoobieRat]

Dunno about silent!

The little SATA drives are pretty quiet, but my 120's, 160's, and 200's scratch like tape-spindles! It's not annoying or loud, but definately more noticeable than my old ATA's.

 

[TheMajor]

Are onboard SATA controllers directly connected to the memory? Using southbridge or not? What about hypertransport etc? Does anybody know?
Cause I don't think the 150MB/s is possible if it uses the southbridge

 

[Blind_Arrow]

spindle speed does counts, as u cannot expect from a 4000RPM fan to be silent than fan running @ 1500RPM.

as well it depends on manufacturer, my WD is a little loud than my seagate though @ 120GB, but it makes me believe that WD is on 10,000 RPM and seagate is on 7200, thats y a little more noise.