SATA vs. SATAII

[F6Hawk]

Is there any increase in performance between them? I mean real-world, not specs. Someone told me that there is about no performance difference between ATA133/SATA 150/SATA 3Gb.

What say ye? Cuz I was planning on RAIDing two 80Gb HDDs for my OS disk, and have two Hitachi SATAIIs picked out. Will they do any better than SATAI or ATA133?

 

[Elbatrop1]

Real-world, noticeable difference, not likely. Sustained data transfer rates are considerably lower than any of the interface speeds (100, 133, 150, or 300MB/s).

I do, however, recommend SATA over PATA. It does perform better. Not so much because it can transfer at 27MB/s more than PATA, but rather the controller that handles the data coming and going from the the drive better than PATA. SATA transfers data serially, and the controller has an easier time dealing with 1 bit at a time, rather than several (as in PATA).

SATA cables are also easier to manage, and allow for better airflow.

 

[Flanker]

Actually, with SATAII, you'll see a huge decrease (as in improvement) in load/transfer times, but not very much decrease in regular times. You won't see as much decrease with SATA-1 though, because like Elbatrop1 said, its only 27MB/s faster than PATA.

 

[Elbatrop1]

Hmmm, considering most hard drives only have an 8MB cache, I dont see how SATAII will show that much of a difference. The only thing that can actually come close to keeping up with the interface speed of any of the drives is the cache. Once the cache is depleted from a burst of data, it will either keep filling and bursting or just keep a sustained rate, which is considerably lower than the interface speed.