Difference between IDE and SATA?

Diomedes1 · Aug 8, 2005

Hi,

I was wondering what the difference is between and IDE hardrive and a SATA one was. I understand that higher RPM's boost performance. I'd also like to know what the significance is of a 8 meg cache, or a 16 meg cache, and if the latter boasts an advantage over the former.

Thanks

SNGX1275 · Aug 8, 2005

IDE uses the big 40/80 pin ribbons. SATA uses much smaller ones.
Higher RPM usually means faster access times, but perhaps not in all cases.
8 Meg cache is about all you'll ever need for today's stuff, 16 is more of a marketing thing for people that think they need 16 to look cool. The difference in your everyday useage will not be noticable.

Diomedes1 · Aug 8, 2005

Thanks for the info, so is that the only difference between SATA and IDE? no performance difference?

I imagine wether you get SATA or IDE affects your choice of motherboard, what format are the popular motherboards, IDE, SATA or both?

SNGX1275 · Aug 8, 2005

In theory there is a performance difference, SATA max out at higher data transfer rates. But you won't ever get to a point today where you will notice.

Liquidlen · Aug 8, 2005

SATA drives are designed to reduce the bottleneck between the CPU, PCI and other components which trade data much faster.Present ATA rating is 150 where as ATA 133 is the fastest of the IDE drves.
Most new Motherboards offer connections to both.
Also ATA 300 SATA drives are supposed to be availible soon if not presently.You should realize that you may not have a real noticable difference in a machine between ATA 133 IDE and ATA 150 SATA the difference is negligible.

Diomedes1 · Aug 8, 2005

Thanks for the help

Blakhart · Aug 9, 2005

SATA is IDE. IDE and SATA is a primitive subset of scsi specs. Just uses different signaling as stated above. SATA will eventualy support most SCSI commands, some already support a few more of them than IDE does. This and the serial interface is what they're after. The use of most of the SCSI commands may add more performance than disk speed increases. SCSI is cool yo.

Difference between IDE and SATA?

Diomedes1

Posts: 25 +0

SNGX1275

Posts: 10,615 +467

Diomedes1

Posts: 25 +0

SNGX1275

Posts: 10,615 +467

Liquidlen

Posts: 1,070 +1

Diomedes1

Posts: 25 +0

Blakhart

Posts: 330 +1

Similar threads

Latest posts