- Jan 2, 2001
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At least, I hope. For those not wanting to look at the RAID and HDD faq in Hard disk thread or not wanting to read the FAQ at the first line of this very thread!
This is something I wrote in another forum, so tell me what you think.
OK..SATA is Serial ATA. IDE is Integrated Drive Electronic, and IDE on older HDD is PATA (Parallele ATA). Two different standard, doing the same thing. SATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE SATA drive. PATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE (ATA)drive.
A SATA drive is an IDE drive using a serial interface to transfer data to the board, while PATA drive is the same drive, but with a parallele interface between the drive and the computer. Serial ATA has greater bandwidth for data transfer than the PATA drive interface, and supposely greater speed, but in reality, drive are not yet able to fully utilise the ATA 100 bandwidth, so you wont get faster speed from either ATA133 and SATA150.
You can set PATA and SATA raid. If you dont plan on RAID, then use the SATA interface as it. SO, no, SATA is not only useful for RAID. SATA is useful to connect the drive to the computer. Just like SCSI. Or ATA. RAID is just a way to set up some drive to have more data security or performance. Read about that on the web. RAID can be used on ATA, SATA and SCSI.
Adding RAID once a drive is already functionning is possible only for RAID1. RAID1 is data mirroring. If you plan to do RAID0, or stripping for better performance, then you CANNOT simply add another drive, as stripping strip the data and send them to both drive at once. so, you have one half of your data in one drive and the other half on the other drive. In RAID0, if one drive fail, you loose everything. in RAID 1, if one drive fail, the other contain the exact copy of the failing drive, so, you dont loose anything.
So just remember. IDE drive are IDE drive no matther if they USE ATA or SATA to connect to the board. Serial ATA move data to and from the drive with a serial wire (small wire)and Parallele ATA move the data to and from the drive with a parallele (wide ribbon).
RAID is just another controller that use the drive in different way as standard controller. If you are not yet familiar with all this stuff, then just use your serial ata drive as a normal drive and forget the RAID thing as it take two identic drive to perform at its best. By setting the controller as a normal SATA one in BIOS, you wont have to bother about driver install at windows setup. The native serial controller will be recognized in windows and the installation will continue.
Unless you are using a third party controller, as Promise, or Sil. Then, since they are added to the motherboard and not integrated in the chipset, you need drivers for SATA operation and RAID operation.
-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!
This is something I wrote in another forum, so tell me what you think.
OK..SATA is Serial ATA. IDE is Integrated Drive Electronic, and IDE on older HDD is PATA (Parallele ATA). Two different standard, doing the same thing. SATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE SATA drive. PATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE (ATA)drive.
A SATA drive is an IDE drive using a serial interface to transfer data to the board, while PATA drive is the same drive, but with a parallele interface between the drive and the computer. Serial ATA has greater bandwidth for data transfer than the PATA drive interface, and supposely greater speed, but in reality, drive are not yet able to fully utilise the ATA 100 bandwidth, so you wont get faster speed from either ATA133 and SATA150.
You can set PATA and SATA raid. If you dont plan on RAID, then use the SATA interface as it. SO, no, SATA is not only useful for RAID. SATA is useful to connect the drive to the computer. Just like SCSI. Or ATA. RAID is just a way to set up some drive to have more data security or performance. Read about that on the web. RAID can be used on ATA, SATA and SCSI.
Adding RAID once a drive is already functionning is possible only for RAID1. RAID1 is data mirroring. If you plan to do RAID0, or stripping for better performance, then you CANNOT simply add another drive, as stripping strip the data and send them to both drive at once. so, you have one half of your data in one drive and the other half on the other drive. In RAID0, if one drive fail, you loose everything. in RAID 1, if one drive fail, the other contain the exact copy of the failing drive, so, you dont loose anything.
So just remember. IDE drive are IDE drive no matther if they USE ATA or SATA to connect to the board. Serial ATA move data to and from the drive with a serial wire (small wire)and Parallele ATA move the data to and from the drive with a parallele (wide ribbon).
RAID is just another controller that use the drive in different way as standard controller. If you are not yet familiar with all this stuff, then just use your serial ata drive as a normal drive and forget the RAID thing as it take two identic drive to perform at its best. By setting the controller as a normal SATA one in BIOS, you wont have to bother about driver install at windows setup. The native serial controller will be recognized in windows and the installation will continue.
Unless you are using a third party controller, as Promise, or Sil. Then, since they are added to the motherboard and not integrated in the chipset, you need drivers for SATA operation and RAID operation.
-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!
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