Korean Job Discussion Forums

itaewonguy · Joined: 25 Mar 2003

so what is everyone using these days?

is sata the only way to go?
keeps the case clean with less wires etc...

any thoughts..?

Giant · Joined: 14 May 2003 Location: South Korea

Mechanicially its still pretty much the same as IDE, just a better interface.

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

I switched fron IDE to SATA about a year ago and didn't notice much performance change. Really hard to tell though because I changed almost all my components at the same time.

Anyway, it sure isn't a night and day difference.

gsxr750r · Joined: 29 Jan 2007

Go with SATA, because it's newer. Yes, better looking case. Slightly more speed, but the bigger speed increases come when you're dealing with larger data chunks (and all of the other pieces in the chain work together at the high rate... motherboard, etc.

BTW, it's more important to get a hard drive with a large cache and a speed of at least 7200. 16MB minimum cache (don't get 2 or Cool

. THAT makes a speed difference!

Thunndarr · Joined: 30 Sep 2003

Go with SATA for sure. You may not notice the difference when you upgrade a lot of components at the same time, but I will tell you a situation in which you most certainly will be able to notice the difference.

I bought a 300 gig Samsung SATA-2 drive a few months ago and migrated Windows install onto it. Nothing else changed, but the difference in hard drive speed (copared to my old IDE drive) was immediately noticeable. Windows boots faster, programs launch faster, folders and files open faster.

And then, just recently, I inadvertently noticed this again. I reinstalled Windows, and due to stupid user error, I had my spiffy, relatively fast SATA drive running in IDE mode and didn't notice until last week. So, into the BIOS I went, messed with a couple of settings, and BAM, it's like having a brand new computer again.

thorin · Joined: 14 Apr 2003

PATA = big stupid cables, slightly slower
SATA = noisier

hanguker · Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Location: Korea

How can it be any faster. They all have the same spin speeds (7200RPM). AFAIK the only way to significantly increase speed is to have a faster spin rate.

bellum99 · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: don't need to know

Read and write times (Various ones)
Seek Times ( many diffferent ones such as Random Seek)
Large block data transfers
so many ways to improves speed...not the RPM's but actual data movement...physical spins don't indicate everything.