$#!t$#!t$#!t SATA hard drives!

  • Thread starter Thread starter ChristopherM
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ChristopherM

ChristopherM

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OK...I spent pretty much all night last night and most of this morning trying to figure out why my damned computer won't recognize my SATA drives. I give up. I called Asus, they said that I needed to load the drivers for them via floppy disc. Shit. I haven't built a floppy into a computer in like three years. So...I dig my old floppy drive out, run to a store quick to buy floppy discs (when was the last time anyone did THAT?), and get to work. My floppy drive wasn't recognized by the system either. So...off to Best Buy I go...and then to Walmart...and then to Staples...after being incredulously stunned at the $30 price of a floppy drive at three places, I bought one and brought it home. IT wasn't recognized by the motherboard. OH well!

So...the floppy drive went back in the box and it's going back to Staples tomorrow, the hard drives are going to eBay because I'll lose too much on them with NewEgg's 15% restocking fee, and I'm going to pick up some nice regular-ATA drives at CompUsa.
 
I had some weird crap with one too. Built up a new fat computer yesterday and turned it on for the first time last night. The mobo is an MSI with an Intel 865 chipset. Anyway, I thought I'd get a 160GB IDE drive for system, apps, and data, and a 120GB SATA drive for audio and video. Only problem is, for some reason, no matter what I do, the system is forcing me to run the SATA drive as the boot device. The 160GB ATA drive doesn't even appear in the list of bootable devices, only floppy, CD drive, and the SATA drive. Weird thing is I was able to install Windows XP to the ATA drive, after booting from the CD ROM, but then the system wouldn't boot from that drive! So I had to go back and reinstall XP on the SATA drive... I'm gonna try a few other tricks tonight.
 
Live can be simple with scsi :)

Nice to know, I'm trying to make my mind up about switching to ide/sata or staying with scsi. The more I read about it, the more I likely to stay.
 
Havoc said:
Live can be simple with scsi :)

Nice to know, I'm trying to make my mind up about switching to ide/sata or staying with scsi. The more I read about it, the more I likely to stay.
Click to expand...
Sure, if you have the cash for it, who wouldn't.


snob! :P
 
Yah, I am going to give it a couple of years for the kinks to be ironed out... or go FireWire or some sort of SCSI.
 
Imho old school ATA is at this point far from obsolete so getting one of those drives wouldn't be such a bad choice. Those interfaces won't disappear very soon from new motherboards.
 
I figured my problem out, some helpful discussion boards over at the manufacturer's site. If I'd had a few more bucks, I definitely would have gone with all SATA drives...
 
charger said:
I figured my problem out, some helpful discussion boards over at the manufacturer's site. If I'd had a few more bucks, I definitely would have gone with all SATA drives...
Click to expand...
That was my original idea. I was having some trouble with speed, because my data drive was only 5000rpm. I think what I'm going to do is keep my 7500rpm 60meg "old school" ATA drive for as the OS drive and buy a nice, fast, big data drive.
 
hm..

imo ide drives wont last long.

IDE drives cant be any faster than what we have today. That's why SATA is here, SATA drives will increase in speed just like USB does. As of now, they are already a little bit faster than ide. And that's just the beginning. IDE = dead, simply cuz it CANT be faster than the fastest IDE driver you can find today. SATA will become much faster with time.

And the fact that you can get SATA drives for just 20 bucks more wont help for IDE to stay longer in the competition.

shit my english sucks sorry.
 
Re: hm..

Shakuan said:
imo ide drives wont last long.
IDE drives cant be any faster than what we have today. That's why SATA is here, SATA drives will increase in speed just like USB does. As of now, they are already a little bit faster than ide. And that's just the beginning. IDE = dead, simply cuz it CANT be faster than the fastest IDE driver you can find today. SATA will become much faster with time.
And the fact that you can get SATA drives for just 20 bucks more wont help for IDE to stay longer in the competition.
Click to expand...
Maybe...but that's future talk. I actually only paid about the same as an IDE drive for each of them, but paid DEARLY in labor trying to get the farking things to work! With IDE, it's plug-and-play. No hassle. The fact that I needed a damned FLOPPY disc to install SATA drivers on one of Asus' FLAGSHIP mobos! UGH! When SATA are three times as fast and plug-and-play, I'll go for it. For now, as long as I don't have dropouts, I'll be OK.

By the way, is there such an animal as a 10,000rpm IDE drive?
 
Re: hm..

Shakuan said:
imo ide drives wont last long.

IDE drives cant be any faster than what we have today. That's why SATA is here, SATA drives will increase in speed just like USB does. As of now, they are already a little bit faster than ide. And that's just the beginning. IDE = dead, simply cuz it CANT be faster than the fastest IDE driver you can find today. SATA will become much faster with time.
Click to expand...
Sustained transfer rates of hard drives are around 50-60 MB/s nowadays. Any ATA interface (nowadays running at 100 or 133 MHz) can deal with that.
The SATA drives on the market today are the same drives, doing 50-60 MB/s and tomorrow's SATA interface won't make them any faster. Tomorrow's SATA hard drive will be faster. But that doesn't help you if you need a hard drive NOW.

SATA drives may have a slightly higher peak rate but really, they aren't significantly faster than drives with the old interface.

Not saying that you shouldn't invest in SATA drives (yet), I just think that right now, it doesn't really matter which one you choose. In 2-3 years you'll probably have no use for the drive anymore anyway.
 
Re: Re: hm..

christiaan said:
In 2-3 years you'll probably have no use for the drive anymore anyway.
Click to expand...

My computer is a constant work-in-progress.
In two to three years it will be a completely different machine!
:D
 
Re: Re: Re: hm..

ChristopherM said:
My computer is a constant work-in-progress.
In two to three years it will be a completely different machine!
:D
Click to expand...
My point exactly. Thank you :D
 
Oh yeah.... I got reminded of one other point agains SATA after reading an article a couple of minutes ago:

Some of the SATA drives on the market are ordinary ATA drives with an added chip for the (Parallel) ATA to SATA conversion.

There goes the speed advantage!
 
As far as the drive is concerned there is no difference between ide and sata. It is just the same mechanics with a different interface/cable to it. It still has to push its data accros the pci bus.
 
I've got a question...

What's the difference between ultra ata drives and sata and which ones are better?
 
30 years of progress, nothing has changed

SATA stands for Serial ATA, whereas Ultra ATA could be PATA for Parallel ATA. To quote SerialATA.org "Most desktop storage systems today use a parallel bus interface referred to as Ultra ATA/100. The parallel ATA interface has been in use on desktop systems as the mainstream internal storage inter-connects since the 1980s (over 15 years!). Today's PCs demand higher speeds, more robust data integrity and flexibility for innovative smaller designs. Physically and electrically, the current parallel bus has run into limitations that will prevent reliable higher data transfer speeds. The move to a new serial interface is necessary in the eyes of industry leaders.". For the trivia hounds among us according to hyperdictionary ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment.

The SATA drives available from my provider are only slightly more expensive than the Ultra ATA drives, but have no more cache (8mb) nor do they have a higher speed (7,200rpm) except for (as previously noted) the Western Digital Raptor which, pardon me, at $112 for a 36GB drive doesn't strike me as a purchase I want to make at this time. Furthermore, the SATA drives cannot use, for some bizzare reason, the standard power cords and need special ones that tack $7 on to the total cost.

I have no doubt that SATA is the way to go, but keep in mind at this time it is more of a path than a destination.
 
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