Advice on disk drives needed

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hi,
I will be needing extra storage and that will mean adding a PCI card to
add an
additional drive, guess eventually I could add more than one on that PCI
expansion card.
Anyway, I see the various types of interfaces; There's
1) E-IDE
2) SATA
3) ATA/100
4) Ultra Series ATA/133 - same as SATA?
5) SATA/150
6) EIDA Ultra /100

How do I compare the performance on these devices? I know to look at buffer
size but there are clearly these other factors regarding the inteface. I
guess much will depend on what is supported by the motherboard or expansion
card.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Bruce


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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 01 May 2004 05:07:00 +0000, Networking and Web Hosting wrote:

> I will be needing extra storage and that will mean adding a PCI card to
> add an additional drive, guess eventually I could add more than one on
> that PCI expansion card.
> Anyway, I see the various types of interfaces; There's 1) E-IDE 2) SATA
> 3) ATA/100 4) Ultra Series ATA/133 - same as SATA? 5) SATA/150 6) EIDA
> Ultra /100
>
> How do I compare the performance on these devices? I know to look at
> buffer size but there are clearly these other factors regarding the
> inteface. I guess much will depend on what is supported by the
> motherboard or expansion card.
> Thanks in advance for any advice,

Figure out what drive you want then buy a card that supports it. ATA and
SATA are not the same. If you buy a sata drive you'll need a sata
controller. An ata133 drive, get an ata133 controller, etc. they also make
controllers that support both.


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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 01 May 2004 05:07:00 GMT, "Networking and Web Hosting"
<bruce@trianglewebhosting.biz> wrote:

>Hi,
> I will be needing extra storage and that will mean adding a PCI card to
>add an
>additional drive, guess eventually I could add more than one on that PCI
>expansion card.
>Anyway, I see the various types of interfaces; There's
>1) E-IDE
>2) SATA
>3) ATA/100
>4) Ultra Series ATA/133 - same as SATA?
>5) SATA/150
>6) EIDA Ultra /100
>
>How do I compare the performance on these devices? I know to look at buffer
>size but there are clearly these other factors regarding the inteface. I
>guess much will depend on what is supported by the motherboard or expansion
>card.
>Thanks in advance for any advice,
>Bruce


Anything the doesn't say SATA is classic Parallel ATA/IDE.

AFAIK UATA began at 66, where they began using the 80 wire cable.
Other than that the /100 or whatever is a data rate.

EIDE is an extension to IDE to allow larger HDDs and some faster
transfer modes, for the time (around 1994 or 95).

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 01 May 2004 05:07:00 GMT, "Networking and Web Hosting"
<bruce@trianglewebhosting.biz> wrote:

>Hi,
> I will be needing extra storage and that will mean adding a PCI card to
>add an
>additional drive, guess eventually I could add more than one on that PCI
>expansion card.
>Anyway, I see the various types of interfaces; There's
>1) E-IDE
>2) SATA
>3) ATA/100
>4) Ultra Series ATA/133 - same as SATA?
>5) SATA/150
>6) EIDA Ultra /100
>
>How do I compare the performance on these devices? I know to look at buffer
>size but there are clearly these other factors regarding the inteface. I
>guess much will depend on what is supported by the motherboard or expansion
>card.
>Thanks in advance for any advice,
>Bruce

Hard drive performance primarily depends on:

- Platter density (more of a drive age issue than a selection of current
makes issue).

- Rotational speed (7200RPM is best value, price goes up steeply from
there)

- Interface speed (simply needs to be in excess of sustained throughput
and the nearer the burst speed the better, for today's drives that means
roughly 80Mb/s is preferred).

- Cache size (generally 2MB vs 8MB, the 8MB cache offers significantly
better performance for multiple I/O but mostly for small writes, for large
linear file transfers (over 10MB) the cache matters much less)

So when looking at the above interfaces you listed, the two main types are
PATA (could be called EIDE, UATA, ATA, ATA33/66/100/133) or SATA. If you
don't see specific mention of "SATA", it's the former type.

- SATA "can" provide better throughput "potential", of 150MB/s, but not in
your situation because you're needing a PCI card, on a PCI bus creating
it's own bottleneck. In practice a single SATA drive on a PCI bus card
will perform worse than a single PATA drive on a modern southbridge
controller.

- PATA should support at least (roughly) the 80MB/s I mentioned
previously, or even higher minimum for a RAID 0 array if you'd like that
option. This means choosing a PATA card with minimal spec of "ATA100" or
100MB/s mentioned, or the highest modern support, ATA133, 133MB/s. These
are only theoretical numbers not realized througput, but are the
standards by which to choose.

SO then the issue is which type of drive? If your motherboard had
integrated southbridge SATA the SATA drive might be a good choice, but
otherwise it's more cost effective and easier to support PATA in your
situation. The "next" system you buy will liklely support SATA so that
could be a consideration, if you want to be able to reuse the drive
without the controller card, but then again, if you have multiplie PATA
drives you'd want to reuse then you might want the PATA card reused too,
so there's plenty of support for PATA.

So it's really up to you, sticking with PATA or choosing SATA. You may
also need an adapter for many SATA drives, and cables. SATA tends to be
the more expensive choice with no performance benefit in your situation,
making PATA the better value. I'd get PATA, ATA133 card and drive unless
you're going to buy a system that natively supports SATA very soon.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote...

>> I will be needing extra storage and that will mean adding a PCI card to
>>add an
>>additional drive, guess eventually I could add more than one on that PCI
>>expansion card.
> >Anyway, I see the various types of interfaces; There's
> >1) E-IDE
> >2) SATA
> >3) ATA/100
> >4) Ultra Series ATA/133 - same as SATA?
> >5) SATA/150
> >6) EIDA Ultra /100
>
> So when looking at the above interfaces you listed, the two main types are
> PATA (could be called EIDE, UATA, ATA, ATA33/66/100/133) or SATA. If you
> don't see specific mention of "SATA", it's the former type.

There is also SCSI, depending on what the system is used for, and what the
budget is...

SCSI has the advantage of supporting up to 7 drives per channel, and many
dual-channel (14 drives) cards are available. Also, the SCSI controller
takes over many of the I/O functions usually performed by the CPU, leaving
the CPU free for other work. The latest standard is U320, though they
require a 64-bit PCI or PCI-X bus for that throughput. SCSI cards are also
available with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 (0=striping, 1=mirroring, 5=striping+CRC
for hot-plug of single failed drive, I don't know about RAID 10) support.
RAID 0 and 1 require 2 or more drives; RAID 5 requires 3 or more.

Also note that the bandwidth of the 32-bit PCI bus is 133 Mbps total, so
anything above that will not be achievable.

For now, IDE/EIDE/ATA 100 or 133 for low budgets, SATA for mid-budget
performance, SCSI for performance at a price.