Legit Reviews

I know the basic differences, but does it really make that much performance/reliability difference to go with SATA than PATA?

I wouldn't say there is a reliability difference, but SATA is the way of the future. Going into 2006 the only HDD anyone should purchase is SATA. Be it for a notebook or a desktop SATA is the only storage solution for new stystems!

As of this week, I'm down to only one IDE HDD for my three systems and that's in my laptop. Go with SATA if you can. The buses on the latest offerings of new motherboards is making the bottleneck of the drives less and less of a problem-something that will not be mitigated with IDE drives.

I can, and plan on it, but I have a couple of IDE drives I would like to keep as mass storage (non-OS/Games) and didn't know if it was that important to solely go SATA.

I'll definitely be getting SATA2 drives on my next system. All of my IDE drives will just be mass storage also.

Yeah, as others have said, there isn't really a performance advantage between SATA and PATA on two identical drives, but SATA is the newer interface and it's always a good idea to adopt the newer standards. Plus, all the newer drives are coming out in SATA, so there is no reason why you shouldn't go SATA if you are purchasing a new drive. But if you already have PATA drives, there really isn't any good reason to upgrade them to SATA (except for the fact that you get a much smaller/easier to work with cable).
But even Dell PC's with a single HDD are being shipped with SATA. I have a fast SATA drive for programs and OS, and a larger capacity (but slightly slower) PATA drive for backups/mass storage and it's a really greaat combo.

gvblake22 wrote:Yeah, as others have said, there isn't really a performance advantage between SATA and PATA on two identical drives, but SATA is the newer interface and it's always a good idea to adopt the newer standards. Plus, all the newer drives are coming out in SATA, so there is no reason why you shouldn't go SATA if you are purchasing a new drive. But if you already have PATA drives, there really isn't any good reason to upgrade them to SATA (except for the fact that you get a much smaller/easier to work with cable).
But even Dell PC's with a single HDD are being shipped with SATA. I have a fast SATA drive for programs and OS, and a larger capacity (but slightly slower) PATA drive for backups/mass storage and it's a really greaat combo.

right said gvblake. SATA isn't faster at all then PATA - not because of the interface at least. I have a 40GB pata from maxtor and it is actually noticably faster then my other 80GB SATA from samsung (the samsung is quieter, but when I found out it was slower then my 3 year old maxtor- I allmost throw it out)

Can I have both SATA and PATA at the same time?
I know we can set master and salve in PATA, how about between them. Will SATA by default to boot up the computer as master?

slaulau wrote:Can I have both SATA and PATA at the same time?
I know we can set master and salve in PATA, how about between them. Will SATA by default to boot up the computer as master?

SATA drives don't need to be master/slave
IDE drives do, because you can connect 2 drives on each channel (cable)
You need to tell the pc which drive is the master/slave -> most motherboards work fine if you set both IDE drives as "cable select" -> this way you don't have to worry about jumppers!

You can run both IDE and SATA on the same board, you don't need to set master/salve because of SATA...only set the HDD jumppers to what normally works! Then set your bios to boot from which ever drive you have XP installed on

ie. just plug & play

I have a question !!!

I just ordered an SATA II drive, but my motherboard says it support SATA I. So does this mean that I'm only gunna get SATA I speeds?

no-sweat wrote:I have a question !!!

I just ordered an SATA II drive, but my motherboard says it support SATA I. So does this mean that I'm only gunna get SATA I speeds?

exactly.

no-sweat wrote:I have a question !!!

I just ordered an SATA II drive, but my motherboard says it support SATA I. So does this mean that I'm only gunna get SATA I speeds?

Backwards compatibility at least??? At least you don't have to buy a completely separate HDD.

Sorry, just trying to create a positive out of a negative. Bummer man.

I've got my SATA Raptor as my main drive and my 120GB PATA drive on its own IDE channel for storage only (no programs). I've even Ghosted from the SATA to the PATA when making a backup image and didn't have any problems. All the systems I have built in the past 6 months have been SATA. Definitely the way to go.

The SATA1 Western Digital Caviar 400GB is wicked fast, definately faster than my old PATA Seagate 'Cuda 7200.7...hopefully I can pop open the Caviar for Xmas lol.

Sovereign wrote:The SATA1 Western Digital Caviar 400GB is wicked fast, definately faster than my old PATA Seagate 'Cuda 7200.7...hopefully I can pop open the Caviar for Xmas lol.

ooooo i got the SATAII Western Digital Caviar 250GB ! I hoped its wicked fast too!!!