IDE to SATA
 

I just recently got an ASUS 6600GT TOP PCI-E card from an old 5200 PCI Card, now I can play ALL my games on top quality however my loading times are slow and when the game finally loads, I experience strong hard drive lag throughout the game.

I am quite positive its not Windows (virus scanned, spyware scanned etc) and I think that my IDE drive is bottlenecking my system, which I would have never noticed before using a PCI GFX card.

Now is a SATA drive going to boost my alround system performance? Currently I have an IDE Seagate barracuda 80GB. I am going to purchase a SATA drive however I have no idea what the best HDDs are, I want a quiet or moderate sounding HDD, I would prefer around 160+ GB space and I would like it to be substancial for games AND be around £100... ..I order from Micro Direct and Ebuyer, please could you direct me to the best SATA HDD?

If they help;

ASUS A8N-Sli Mobo
AMD64 3200+ Winchester 939 pin
Crucial 512MB RAM (ALSO WANT UPGRADING, THIS RAM IS ATROCOUS!)
ASUS EN6600GT TOP

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I noticed a huge increase in speed when going from an 80GB WD Caviar IDE to a 120GB Maxtor DiamondMax 9 SATA.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

If you're after speed you probably want two drives in a Raid 0 (striped) config - fairly sure the A8N will support SATA RAID. I have a pair of DiamondMax drives (mine in Raid 1 for protection) but if you can push your budget, the WD Raptor drives spin at 10K rpm (33% faster than most other drives).

Alternatively get a single 74Gb Raptor for OS and programs and use your existing 80Gb drive for data.

HTH
__________________

Just checked MicroDirect and a single Raptor is £120 !

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...46&GroupID=596

Re: IDE to SATA
 

The new maxtor diamond max 10 or maxline II if you want huge offer a good compromise between size speed and value for money

The raptors are great but high price per gig rate

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Get an extra 512mb of ram, the difference between going 512>1gb than IDE>SATA is much greater.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I have just got 1GB (2 X 512) of RAM PC2700 and is set in dual channel. This has actually eliminated the HDD lag during games so now I am stuck whether to get some RAM (This RAM, further recommendations appreciated), or a new SATA drive. As you can see I am willing to pay a lot more for the memory, my system is hopefully going to be a very decent gaming system. If I get decent hardware, in the future all I will ever need to replace is the GFX card and CPU.

Aragorn; I like your solution about getting a rapter HDD just for games and applications and OS, however I dont want to spend £120 a HDD thats only 74GB. I would however spend £120 on 2 SATA Drives just to set them in RAID formation.

Oh 1 more thing, is it possible to move everything, including Windows from an IDE drive to a SATA drive?

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Given that you've got 1 Gb of PC2700 RAM, adding some very expensive PC3200 RAM would be a waste of money! The RAM will run at the speed of the slowest stick, so that nice OCZ memory would be trundling along at 333 Mhz, unless you chuck out the PC2700 sticks! Also, I'm not sure whether the matched Dual Channel requirement applies to all sticks in the system or just the paired slots. (ie will different matched pairs in 0a,1a & 0b,1b still run in Dual Channel).

Personally I would stick with the new 1Gb Dual Channel PC2700 and get a pair of DiamondMax 10's for Raid 0.

As far as copying the OS across goes, in theory yes but in practice I found that my XP kernel would not boot from the NForce RAID controller. I had to reload a fresh copy of XP with the Nforce drivers and then restore my data.

HTH

Re: IDE to SATA
 

IMHO, all other things being equal, you will barely notice the difference between an IDE drive and a SATA drive. See, for example, this article. However, SATA is obviously the way of the future.

My suggestions are:
1) check that you have DMA enabled for the IDE driver

2) look for a 10Krpm SATA II drive

3) raid a pair of 10Krpm SATA II drives

4) check eBay for some second-hand SCSI kit. I use here (and also look after 5 other computers with) a mobo with onboard U160 SCSI coupled to some 15Krpm drives. They really shift.

Before you install XP on any SATA drives make sure you have the drivers on a floppy!!!!

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I speed tested my drive, look at the attachment. Is it bad or good?

Oh and aragorn, I forgot to say the RAM is not mine, its borrowed, so I want to get 1GB (2X512MB) any way.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Never seen that speed test before, but it suggests the disk is running at ATA100 speeds! Is it sharing an IDE channel with with a CD/DVD/Tape? Given that SATA runs on a dedicated channel at upto 150Mb/s I would say SATA should see be a big improvement in startup times, esp a Raid 0 pair.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

No it is on its own IDE channel, my dvd and cdrw drives are ona second Nvidia UDMA 5 controller.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I believe only Maxtor drives can come with ata133 speeds,seagate drives run at ata100

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Indeedy:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...st380011a.html

But the test shows the OP is not saturating the interface - or anywhere near it. The problem is with the mechanics. Start looking for a HDD with an average seek time of under 4mS.

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Indeedy indeed :LOL:

Re: IDE to SATA
 

How about 2 of these, anyone know if these drives are fast? Its stated that it uses 'fluid dynamic bearing motors for quiet operation', which is what my seagate baraccuda has got so I have no doubt this drive is quiet.

I quite like the idea of ordering 2 of these drives and setting them RAID 0, however reading my mobo manual, I can set it in 1+0, is that better? Also will I only get 160GB space in RAID rather than 160X2?

Re: IDE to SATA
 

striping raid provides highest performance,mirroring adds security

I personally would stripe them if speed is all important if not I would not bother raiding them at all but leave them as 2 drives and keep an up to date ghost image on second and back up data there also

pcpro magazine like the diamond max 10's they score as good all rounders

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I have one of those disks - so far so good (1 week!) - certainly nice and quiet.

A quick note about RAID modes -

Raid 0 - aka striping - great performance, no resilience - capacity = 2 x smallest disk.
Raid 1 - aka mirroring - data resilience - good read performance, similar write performance - capacity = size of single disk.
Raid 0+1 - mirrored stripes - resilience and speed - needs FOUR drives!! - capacity = 2 x single drive

HTH

Re: IDE to SATA
 

Thanks I think I will be choosing the DiamondMax 10!

Carrying on with my questions; this one slighly off the topic but I will relate it to HDD.

My PSU is a ColorsIT 400WATT ATX 1.0, currently my system is stable, however I am curious, you see, my motherboard has 3 power connections;

4 pin 12V
24 pin ATX
4 pin molex connector (this is for PCI-E graphics cards making it more stable, especially using SLi)

Now all I have connected at the moment is the 4 pin 12V connection, and a 20pin ATX connector. The attachment is asus probe, and it shows that all my voltages are under, not by much I admit.

I dont want to risk any hardware damage because of low voltages, do you guys recommend getting a new PSU ATX2.0 as well? There are no spare molex connections if I do get 2 HDD...........

Re: IDE to SATA
 

the 24 pin is a new type of connection,your getting the same results using the sep 4 pin,if the pc is stable then I don't think you should worry a lot of cheaper power supplies last for ages and work fine,but you get what you pay for and more expensive higher power psu's do offer more stable voltages

you can buy molex splitters for pence http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/acatalog/pccables.html

I use a couple of these with a reasonable 500w psu (not an expensive one) and my machine runs 8 hdd's and 3 optical with a x800 xt pe fine and dandy

Re: IDE to SATA
 

I just looked at the MOLEX>SATA converter power cables that come with my mobo and they split from 1 molex into 2 sata, so I am ok.