Serial ATA HDD (Need QUICK advice!)

o_vertical · 09-30-2006, 07:00 AM

I'm very seriously considering buying this drive http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1130985130674

it has 300Mbs transfer over 100Mbs the same one in EIDE has: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1051826249450

they cost the same, and the SATA drive has a 16MB buffer rather than 8 that the EIDE has. My question is, that being an older motherboard, would mine support this SATA drive? My motherboard does have Serial ATA connectors (2), so how do go about this? Does SATA work the same as EIDE? I just plug the drive in, and voila? Or is there a bunch of shit involved in getting it setup, if so I'll likely go with the slower EIDE. Somebody give some quick advice, because not only is it on sale, I want to hurry up and get some more space, I am running VERY low. (BTW, I can use SATA and my current EIDE drives at the same time correct?)

o_atari · 09-30-2006, 07:06 AM

Yeah you can use SATA and IDE at the same time. If you have the connectors AND your bios supports it (F4 on start up for me) then you are good to go. Theres not a great deal invloved, unless you want to start running multiple drives in parallel afaik.

My first was easy to setup, plugged it in, went in to bios and set it up as a single, loaded up windows, drive found.

o_the russian · 09-30-2006, 07:11 AM

use www.pricegrabber.com ... that is not as good of a deal as you'll find online, considering BB would either charge you tax + shipping / handling, or just tax for pickup... I have one of these and I can vouch its great, not hard to setup at all and you dont have to dick around with the bios unless you plan to run your OS off of it, which you could... its backward compatible to old sata 1 as well, which I'm guessing you have, and I have it too... dont worry, we cant yet reach the levels SATAII can reach so it dont matter...

http://www.storagereview.com/ is the best website, IMHO, to find out which HDD is the fastest and most responsive to your needs... they are superbly thorough but I feel they could use more HDs which to test since I cant find the right comparisons sometimes...

o_vertical · 10-01-2006, 12:14 AM

Thanks for the replies guys, I was already finding it cheaper on newegg after I posted those links, but BB had more detail, so I kept those links posted. And yeah, I had basically forgotton about pricegrabber.com :P I'll check that out, and try to grab one here in a day or so. (Today or tomorrow) I'm so low on space it's not even funny :/

I would like to run windows XP off of it, but honestly, I don't want to do a clean install again, I have battled with this install for a long time now, and fixed countless problems, and its working perfectly fine atm (besides a 50% cpu bug that hasn't cropped up lately) So I will most likely be using the new drive as a storage drive for now.

o_the russian · 10-01-2006, 05:51 PM

runing your OS off of it should not be hard...

to install any SATA HD you'll need some SATA drivers, if you have a modern WinXP install CD with Sp2 included then it will come with its own drivers, otherwise be prepared to use the little floppy disk that came with sata drivers with your mobo.

to install your OS you have to go into your bios and after plugging your SATA HD in, select it to be the FIRST HD to be booted in the list in bios. Then, select the CDrom drive to be the first device to be booted... throw in your WinXP CD, and when prompted for extra drivers, press F6 like the setup says... it'll continue for a while till it asks you for the drivers off your floppy... go ahead and do that and it should all recognize... if your installation cd is modern through, you wont need it, and the WinXp installation process will detect the HD on its own... but if it doesnt detect, reboot and go through that driver process I mentioned...

if you lost the disk, do some online searching... sometimes a disk even comes with an HD.

PS: want a realy good deal on a superb HD to have your OS and Pagefile on? ... check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140

btw, on [H]ardForum there is an EXTRA deal for the forum members where you get an extra $5 off this HD if you're a member, use the code 'fredsbarracuda' at checkout... and its a rare free 3-day shipping on it as well as lowest online price and the $5 off... at $89.99 shipped, its an awesome deal for a realy fast 320 GB SATA HD.

remember, to gain maximum SINGLE USER speed on a SATA HD, dissable NCQ or TCQ... you'll have to do this by going into hardware and right clicking on the properties of the SATA adaptors that are built in to your mobo, and then deselecting TCQ or NCQ ... basicaly Command Queing in its two types helps only multi-user servers, not single users (it slows down single users)... so dissable it for a big speed boost once you get it...

about 6 months ago I was new to SATA myself, I'm just trying to share what I've learned... and now all my HDs includeing exterior are SATA, its worth it

o_milk · 10-01-2006, 05:58 PM

Western Digital is loud, that is an important 'no no' for me. I recommend Seagate for good warranty, and very little noise. For reliability, I have never had a failed Western Digital even with a 10 year old drive. I have had one Seagate with a flaw in the disk surface though it came out of the box like that. The other Seagates have never failed. As a comparison, I have purchased about 4 maxtors, and only 2 of them havent died.

In all, I have handled 3 Western Digitals(loud), 4 Seagates(mostly quiet), 4 Maxtors(mildly quiet), and 1 Samsung Spinpoint(very quiet).

SATA drives will add a 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in your taskbar allowing hotswap, even if it IS your windows drive. Never clicked it, never plan on seeing if it really will let me eject my C:\ but I sure hope it wont. Kind of annoying IMO considering I dont think its possible to disable.

Disabling NCQ for my asus a8n32 sli with my Seagate NL35 actually slows down my drive about 5 to 30 bytes* per second. I wouldnt reccomend you disable it until you have tested the differences between the two =p Though if he has a really old motherboard, most likely it wont support NCQ or TCQ.

*edit: oops, I wasnt paying attention. Disabling NCQ slows my drive down about 5 to 30 million bytes per second.

o_the russian · 10-01-2006, 07:28 PM

well... I can tell you this... www.storeagereview.com tests every drive with ncq on and off, and all of them score higher with it off and they have a thurough chart. Command Queing is for multi-user environments, like the SATA HDs are made for server use like SCSIs are.

I've had 3 maxtors (all IDE), 1 WD raptor (SATA), 1 WD 120gb (IDE), and my 1 WD2500KS (SATA)... I dont buy Maxtor anymore as I've had several fail on me but all that failed were (IDE), I have no experience with maxtor sata. I have a Seagate 120 GB IDE thats been runing for over 4 years now that I use as backup, and my external storage is a Seagate 320GB SATA. My Raptor 74gb 00FLA0 model just died yesterday, and yesterday I purchased the Seagate 320GB that I linked to in that deal above. My exteral Seagate 320 model is the 7200.9, the new model they have on newegg was released in may, its the 7200.10 model and is currently clocking in unusualy fast on many tests. And by unusualy I mean it beat the Raptor X 150 on several. Those several are all linear and not random like active gaming, which is why this HD is great for OS and Pagefile because pagefile is like extra linear ram.

check the annandtech.com review here: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2803&p=3

o_milk · 10-01-2006, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Russian

well... I can tell you this... www.storeagereview.com tests every drive with ncq on and off, and all of them score higher with it off and they have a thurough chart

Wrong address, and I wouldnt believe every review site you read a review from. They dont exhibit any particularly reputable reviewing techniques such as baselining motherboards with certain chipsets. Obviously since the motherboard controls access, and companies like Nvidia design bus optimizations, there will be discriminating results. Its obvious that they arent providing anything to base decisions upon. NCQ shouldn't be messed with unless its obvious a system runs better for the user with it disabled.

o_the russian · 10-01-2006, 08:45 PM

I miss-spelled it, http://www.storagereview.com/ is the right one

and this site is trustworthy

09-30-2006, 07:00 AM	#1
o_vertical Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: USA, KY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Serial ATA HDD (Need QUICK advice!) I'm very seriously considering buying this drive http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1130985130674 it has 300Mbs transfer over 100Mbs the same one in EIDE has: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1051826249450 they cost the same, and the SATA drive has a 16MB buffer rather than 8 that the EIDE has. My question is, that being an older motherboard, would mine support this SATA drive? My motherboard does have Serial ATA connectors (2), so how do go about this? Does SATA work the same as EIDE? I just plug the drive in, and voila? Or is there a bunch of shit involved in getting it setup, if so I'll likely go with the slower EIDE. Somebody give some quick advice, because not only is it on sale, I want to hurry up and get some more space, I am running VERY low. (BTW, I can use SATA and my current EIDE drives at the same time correct?)

10-01-2006, 05:58 PM	#6
o_milk Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Western Digital is loud, that is an important 'no no' for me. I recommend Seagate for good warranty, and very little noise. For reliability, I have never had a failed Western Digital even with a 10 year old drive. I have had one Seagate with a flaw in the disk surface though it came out of the box like that. The other Seagates have never failed. As a comparison, I have purchased about 4 maxtors, and only 2 of them havent died. In all, I have handled 3 Western Digitals(loud), 4 Seagates(mostly quiet), 4 Maxtors(mildly quiet), and 1 Samsung Spinpoint(very quiet). SATA drives will add a 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in your taskbar allowing hotswap, even if it IS your windows drive. Never clicked it, never plan on seeing if it really will let me eject my C:\ but I sure hope it wont. Kind of annoying IMO considering I dont think its possible to disable. Disabling NCQ for my asus a8n32 sli with my Seagate NL35 actually slows down my drive about 5 to 30 bytes* per second. I wouldnt reccomend you disable it until you have tested the differences between the two =p Though if he has a really old motherboard, most likely it wont support NCQ or TCQ. edit: oops, I wasnt paying attention. Disabling NCQ slows my drive down about 5 to 30 million* bytes per second. Last edited by o_milk; 10-01-2006 at 06:18 PM.

09-30-2006, 07:06 AM	#2
o_atari Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Somerset, UK Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Yeah you can use SATA and IDE at the same time. If you have the connectors AND your bios supports it (F4 on start up for me) then you are good to go. Theres not a great deal invloved, unless you want to start running multiple drives in parallel afaik. My first was easy to setup, plugged it in, went in to bios and set it up as a single, loaded up windows, drive found.

09-30-2006, 07:11 AM	#3
o_the russian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	use www.pricegrabber.com ... that is not as good of a deal as you'll find online, considering BB would either charge you tax + shipping / handling, or just tax for pickup... I have one of these and I can vouch its great, not hard to setup at all and you dont have to dick around with the bios unless you plan to run your OS off of it, which you could... its backward compatible to old sata 1 as well, which I'm guessing you have, and I have it too... dont worry, we cant yet reach the levels SATAII can reach so it dont matter... http://www.storagereview.com/ is the best website, IMHO, to find out which HDD is the fastest and most responsive to your needs... they are superbly thorough but I feel they could use more HDs which to test since I cant find the right comparisons sometimes...

10-01-2006, 12:14 AM	#4
o_vertical Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: USA, KY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Thanks for the replies guys, I was already finding it cheaper on newegg after I posted those links, but BB had more detail, so I kept those links posted. And yeah, I had basically forgotton about pricegrabber.com :P I'll check that out, and try to grab one here in a day or so. (Today or tomorrow) I'm so low on space it's not even funny :/ I would like to run windows XP off of it, but honestly, I don't want to do a clean install again, I have battled with this install for a long time now, and fixed countless problems, and its working perfectly fine atm (besides a 50% cpu bug that hasn't cropped up lately) So I will most likely be using the new drive as a storage drive for now.

10-01-2006, 05:51 PM	#5
o_the russian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	runing your OS off of it should not be hard... to install any SATA HD you'll need some SATA drivers, if you have a modern WinXP install CD with Sp2 included then it will come with its own drivers, otherwise be prepared to use the little floppy disk that came with sata drivers with your mobo. to install your OS you have to go into your bios and after plugging your SATA HD in, select it to be the FIRST HD to be booted in the list in bios. Then, select the CDrom drive to be the first device to be booted... throw in your WinXP CD, and when prompted for extra drivers, press F6 like the setup says... it'll continue for a while till it asks you for the drivers off your floppy... go ahead and do that and it should all recognize... if your installation cd is modern through, you wont need it, and the WinXp installation process will detect the HD on its own... but if it doesnt detect, reboot and go through that driver process I mentioned... if you lost the disk, do some online searching... sometimes a disk even comes with an HD. PS: want a realy good deal on a superb HD to have your OS and Pagefile on? ... check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140 btw, on [H]ardForum there is an EXTRA deal for the forum members where you get an extra $5 off this HD if you're a member, use the code 'fredsbarracuda' at checkout... and its a rare free 3-day shipping on it as well as lowest online price and the $5 off... at $89.99 shipped, its an awesome deal for a realy fast 320 GB SATA HD. remember, to gain maximum SINGLE USER speed on a SATA HD, dissable NCQ or TCQ... you'll have to do this by going into hardware and right clicking on the properties of the SATA adaptors that are built in to your mobo, and then deselecting TCQ or NCQ ... basicaly Command Queing in its two types helps only multi-user servers, not single users (it slows down single users)... so dissable it for a big speed boost once you get it... about 6 months ago I was new to SATA myself, I'm just trying to share what I've learned... and now all my HDs includeing exterior are SATA, its worth it

10-01-2006, 07:28 PM	#7
o_the russian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	well... I can tell you this... www.storeagereview.com tests every drive with ncq on and off, and all of them score higher with it off and they have a thurough chart. Command Queing is for multi-user environments, like the SATA HDs are made for server use like SCSIs are. I've had 3 maxtors (all IDE), 1 WD raptor (SATA), 1 WD 120gb (IDE), and my 1 WD2500KS (SATA)... I dont buy Maxtor anymore as I've had several fail on me but all that failed were (IDE), I have no experience with maxtor sata. I have a Seagate 120 GB IDE thats been runing for over 4 years now that I use as backup, and my external storage is a Seagate 320GB SATA. My Raptor 74gb 00FLA0 model just died yesterday, and yesterday I purchased the Seagate 320GB that I linked to in that deal above. My exteral Seagate 320 model is the 7200.9, the new model they have on newegg was released in may, its the 7200.10 model and is currently clocking in unusualy fast on many tests. And by unusualy I mean it beat the Raptor X 150 on several. Those several are all linear and not random like active gaming, which is why this HD is great for OS and Pagefile because pagefile is like extra linear ram. check the annandtech.com review here: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2803&p=3

10-01-2006, 08:45 PM	#9
o_the russian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	I miss-spelled it, http://www.storagereview.com/ is the right one and this site is trustworthy

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