Serial ATA CDROM & Command Queuing

D

Dr. Ffreeze

Regular
Hello All,

I am very interested in Serial ATA and the ease of cabling that it would allow. I would like to see Parallel ATA go by the wayside but for that CDROMs and DVDs need to support Serial ATA.

1] Does anyone have any info on the ETA for Serial ATA CDROMs and DVDs will be available in the retail channel?

I also am interested in seeing Native Command Queuing in hard drives and I did a bit of quick research. Some of you might find this interesting too so I will list the links I found.

Seagate and Intel Whitepaper
http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/whitepaper/D2c_tech_paper_intc-stx_sata_ncq.pdf

Hard Disk Command Queuing Goes Native in Seagate Drive
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1492383,00.asp

SATA II Features Make a Mark at IDF
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1274615,00.asp

Barracuda 7200.7 SATA and Datasheets
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,585,00.html
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda7200.7.pdf

Serial ATA – Enabling the Future
http://www.serialata.org/

2] I do not see any mention of Native Command Queuing in the Seagate Barracuda datasheet. Does anyone know if any shipping Seagate or other drive has Native Command Queuing?

Thanks,
Dr. Ffreeze
 
Dr. Ffreeze said:
1] Does anyone have any info on the ETA for Serial ATA CDROMs and DVDs will be available in the retail channel?
Click to expand...

Sorry...don't know. Good question though!

I do not see any mention of Native Command Queuing in the Seagate Barracuda datasheet. Does anyone know if any shipping Seagate or other drive has Native Command Queuing?
Click to expand...

The Western Digital 74 GB Raptor has it. Though to my knowledge, it hasn't really been tested for effectiveness yet. There's an apparent lack of SATA controllers that support command queing though...at least that's compatible with the Raptor.

StorageReview did a review of the raptor, where you can see the effect of command queing on the SCSI drives in a "multi-user" environment. Pretty dramatic.
 
One of the mentioned papers might say this since I can't remember where I read it, but at the last IDF Seagate demoed a working Barracuda 7200.7. So we know they have the technology working. I'm hoping NCQ can be enabled with a bios update since I have this drive, but even if it's technically possible I'm doubting Seagate would do this since they aren't marketing it as a feature. Most companies just don't give you something for free.
 
3dcgi,

Though the product itself features firmware-level tagged command queuing, at the time of this writing, no appropriate controllers were available from several likely manufacturers. TCQ will likely bring significantly better performance scaling as multi-user loads increase; as of now, however, it remains a future promise. This initial review features the Raptor operating with a Promise SATA150TX4 controller.
Click to expand...
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_1.html

Looks like you need a controller to support NCQ

Dr. Ffreeze
 
Native command queuing (the SATA approach) is NOT the same as used by for example IBM's Deathstar series of drives and the WD Raptors. These employ PATA tagged command queuing instead, even on the SATA version of those drives.

So far, only Seagate's SATA drives support NCQ, and you still need a driver for the host adapter to take advantage of the feature. Intel's Application Accelerator MIGHT do that, but I'm not sure.
 
Dr. Ffreeze said:
3dcgi,

Though the product itself features firmware-level tagged command queuing, at the time of this writing, no appropriate controllers were available from several likely manufacturers. TCQ will likely bring significantly better performance scaling as multi-user loads increase; as of now, however, it remains a future promise. This initial review features the Raptor operating with a Promise SATA150TX4 controller.
Click to expand...
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_1.html

Looks like you need a controller to support NCQ

Dr. Ffreeze
Click to expand...
Thanks. I actually realized that. I'm hoping that the only thing I need to buy is a PCI controller card. My old computer had SCSI which supports command queueing and I definitely noticed an improvement when multiple programs were trying to access the hard drive simultaneously. It just wasn't worth the price premium to go with SCSI this time though.
 
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