SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

Hi All,
Im gonna buy a new hard disk, but im not upgrading my full system yet, however it will be done eventually and im looking to buy stuff now that i can use in it later so im looking to get a SATA II disk.

However as i only have IDE support im looking for a SATA controller - however - and please read this folks, im looking for one that supports SATAII.

Are there any out there - cheap - that you know off?

Re: SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

Actually forget it - i've done some reading and basically from what i can tell SATA is a gimmick with the advantage of having a thinner cable. SATA II has a "300 Mbps" transfer rate - which is whoopie, except that the most you can transfer from a disk is about 70 - 80 mbps in real world unless your reading from the buffer.

So therefore the disk with the biggest buffer is the best, give or take, as with IDE, SATA or SATAII as you'll never be able to achieve higher transfer rates than around 90mbps.

Other gimmicky stuff like NCQ (Native command queing) which is implemented on certain SATA drives are supposed to spead things up, but from what i can tell under real world conditions it dosent do much with some drives actually performing worse with NCQ on than off under real world.

So in effect - get SATA as its going to be on most Mobo's etc in the future, but dont expect much more from it than your normal IDE drive.

Unless somebody knows different and i have misread this stuff.

Re: SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

I dunno about that, my WD Raptor 74GB is fast as hell. :D

Re: SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

Thats because it is 10,000 rpm and, like yourself i imagine, has a small platter. :D

Re: SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

SATA is easier to RAID.

Re: SATA 2 PCI Controller
 

Yeah its easier if you are setting up a RAID setup.
As for difference between SATA1 and SATA2, I've not really seen that much of a difference.