Whats the performance difference between maxtor SATA ,WD raptor SATA and IDE maxtor drives?

Am I right in thinking that I must be using RAID if i want to use SATA drives (and therefore I must but at least 2 SATA hard drives?)

Whilst we're at it what is PATA?

Thanks all

PATA = Parallel ATA (the way we have been connecting harddrives for years), SATA stands for Serial ATA.

For most discs, PATA is fine. Why? Because they can't benefit from the bandwith that SATA has to offer over PATA.
The points in choosing a SATA drive over a PATA drive would be:
1. Smaller cables
2. Reserve PATA ports
3. Faster drives (this only goes for the WD Raptor series, other SATA drives perform equal or worse compared to standard PATA drives, as they someticmes are just PATA drives with built-in PATA->SATA convertors).

RAID arrays can be build from both PATA and SATA drives (can even be mixed). In what combinations this is possible depends on the controller.

OK, with this MSI board, can I make use of just 1 SATA drive or can only use SATA hard drives in RAID with this board.

Will i see any noticable performance gain with 2 Hard Drives in RAID-0 (I will use them to burn DVDs and play games)?

Would I see notice that the SATA version of a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 is slower campared to the PATA/IDE version or would the difference be unnoticable?

Thanks Dee-ehn and anyone else

{[Btw its a shame this board doesnt support Dual channel DDR]}

From the MSI website:
• Promise 20378 On-Board
• Supports 2 serial ATA plus 1 ATA133
- RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 is supported
- RAID function work w/ATA133+SATA H/D or 2SATA H/D
• Connect up to 2 SATA device and 2 ATA133 devices

This means that a RAID array can be made of 2 SATA drives, 1 SATA and 1 PATA drive and 2 SATA and 1 PATA drive (for mode 0+1).

Well the differences are quite nice. You won't get double performance, but speeds can go up by about 80% (max that is). it wouldn't add that much when burning DVDs, but a lot of other actions can be performed much faster. Datatransfers will be a lot faster in most situations and that's always good, isn't it?

For example: a single modern PATA harddisk does about 30/40 MB/sec (very roughly estimated, but good enough for this explanation), while a RAID 0 array of WD Raptor discs can go over 100MB/sec!

This drive is one of the drives that has been equipped with an internal SATA->PATA convertor. This simply means that the performance will never be better than the PATA drive's. As an additional convertor is added, latencies may be a bit higher, resulting in a somewhat lower performance. Badly enough, I couldn't find a good comparison between the drives, but as in most situations, the drive is marginally slower. I don't think you'd notice it.... but benchmarks'd show it!

Sure, always


No it's not . Why? The Athlon 64 has a built-in memory controller (indeed, no need for a northbridge anymore) and this one's equipped with a single channel memory controller. That isn't too much of a problem, since it performs very good with this single channel memory. The Athlon 3400+ even outperforms the FX-51 (more expensive dual channel Athlon with socket 939/940) in quite some benchmarks!

id go with the seagates, rather than with maxtor

they (and the WD's) are the only drive with true SATA circuitry , ie not SATA->PATA built in.

just put up my raid0 with 2x 120's, and they hum nicely, get abit hot however, but some cooling will fix that

I'm a little confused; wouldn't RAID 0+1=RAID 10 require at least 4 drives? *Does SATA only exist in RAID arrays (ie not as a single, lone SATA hard drive on its own)?

The rest of ur help has been great!

I think i'll buy the 3200+ 64athlon processor, the MSI mobo, one 512MB DDR chip and one Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 PATA/SATA drive, depending on the answer to * (for the time being, until i can aford another DiamondMax Plus9 drive.)

{[Btw Dee-ehn, the first link of your signature isn't working]}

Sorry, I should have stated that more clear. What I meant to say is that there are 2 SATA channels (for 1 disk each) and 1 PATA channel (for 2 disks). Together this makes 4 disks, suited for RAID 0+1. My mistake, sorry about that!

SATA drives can work very fine on their own. Thing is, on most mainboards, the SATA controller is in fact a controller capable of makking RAID arrays(chipsets with a SATA controller in the chipset are quite rare). If you want to use just one SATA disk that's fine. Some controllers accept this without any problem, other controllers require to make an array of just one disk. This can be done easily from the controller's BIOS.

[I must seem like the fool who can't stop asking questions - I am]

If the SATA drives are slightly slower than the PATA ones, wont RAID-0 ATA133+SATA H/D cause trouble because of the 2 drives being slightly out of sync (compared to 2SATA drives which will be in sync)

I will in the end buy 1 SATA drive and follow it up with a PATA drive when i get the cash.

I doubt that, but in any case the diff would be insignificant. Although the TX2+ will allow you to create an array with the SATA and PATA drives, I don't think I would recommend doing so unless the drives are identical; ie: one running on a SATA converter.
You don't have to use RAID on any of the SATA controllers that I know of, but with some you have to use different drivers or BIOS to run them in non-RAID mode. That particular controller may require you to create 2 1-disc arrays, but the result is the same.

I've run 2 WD 800JB's and 2 Seagate 160's on SATA converters and saw no measurable loss of performance in benchmarks.

Aside the raptors, SATA drives are really PATA drives with a converter built on the board of the hdd. Just look closely and you can actually see it. Also the extar space left over from the PATA box-like enclosure, they dont even bother taking it out. However, SATA is supposedly more stable, and the drives cost like $20 more, but then again so does a SATA to PATA converter so you spend the same in the end.

here in manchester you get the SATA/PATA prices within £3

sorry to drag this old thread up, but i am now at the stage when I want to get my second hard drive to make a RAID array (I already have a 160 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 SATA)

My supplier is out of stock of the 160 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 SATA drives, and has the DiamondMax Plus9 ATA133 and the 160GB DiamondMax Plus10 SATA (which is cheaper!) drives in stock.

We have already established in this thread that I can make a RAID array using 1 SATA (which I already have) and 1 PATA, but does anyone know if I can make an array with 1 SATA DiamondMax Plus9 and 1 SATA DiamondMax Plus10 ?

I would prefer to do the latter as it will keep my IDE ports free and is cheaper than buying a PATA or DiamondMax Plus9.

Tia

You should have identical HDDs when building RAID arrays, if you mix one drive will limit the other one.
//Danne

So if i have a dmax 9 and a dmax 10 Raid-0 array, it would work except the dmax 10 drive would perform as if it was a dmax 9 drive?

Pretty much
//Danne

Mixing drives in a RAID-0 array is a receipe for trouble. While it may work out alright, there's an increased chance for trouble. A lot will depend on the controller's ability to handle it. It's also true that you will gain very little, if anything, in terms of speed with these drives in RAID-0. Benchmarks aside, you won't "feel" any increase in speed at all.

I've built several high end systems and always prefer the 10,000 rpm Raptor drives over Raid. KISS.

i am assuming that there will be some king of performance increase when i am dealing with reading/writing/copying/un-archiving large files (>1GB) which i tend to a lot. I want the extra storage anyway, so why not have it as a raid 0.

out of sheer caution, i may go for the dmax9 so i have identical drives to make the array. Please if anyone has experience about the hardware I have on these issuses (RAID, particularily on my motherboard) please post and give me your experiences.

Does anyone know about any good info sites or utilities about setting up raid0 with SATA drives?

Tia

It's arguable whether any speed increase can be seen with RAID-0 using IDE drives (or SATA). This debate has been going on for a long time. For transferring large files to and from the array, you may see a small boost in speed, but we're talking about seconds.
IMHO, Raptor drives are the only SATA drives worth RAIDing, but even that is debatable.
There are some good threads on this topic HERE .

regardless, for purely experimentational purposes, i am going to setup the array. I know everyone loves the raptors but i simly can't afford them for the storage capacities i want.

this thread contains links to making raid arrays to anyone who needs them:
http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/archive/...p/t-39567.html

A small remark... RAID 0+1 is different from RAID 10...





ET

I'll stick with PATAs. It'll save me some $$$ to buy something else. Though I may want SATA, I don't have a practical need for it [yet].

sorry i meant to give the following link:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37918

http://www.lanstore.co.kr/item.php?it_id=2113

3 meter SATA cable. I'm wondering if it's 30cm or 300cm. I have 8 1m cables, about 10-20 80cm cables, and many other shorter (60-40cm) cables. For PATA, longest ones are 80cm only.