Serial ATA hard drive questions.....

[digitalwanderer]

Ok, so my wife kind of screwed up this morning since she woke up late and was groggy and sent me over to me mother's to drop off my daughter for a "Grandma Day" (which they both love) without remembering that the PC show was today... :?

Anywho, I picked up a serial ATA Western Digital 200GB hard drive for $125us and I'm still trying to figure out exactly why I did it.

So, what's the big deal with serial ATA? Should I reset up my PC so that the new drive is the primary drive, is it quicker? Or should I just dig up me serial cable for my NF7-s rev2 and hook it up?

Oh, and is the price ok? I have NO clue, it was a purely impulse buy.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Right, so I guess it's either a "we hate you Dig, bugger off!" thing or else a "put the damned hard drive in and find out for yourself" type thing.

Found me sATA cable finally for the mobo, gonna see if I can't find a free couple of minutes to pop it in before the wife wakes up from her nap. (Cash upgrades that aren't noticeable don't really bother her very much....so long as she never finds out about 'em! )

 

[DarN]

Well, if it's the SE WD2000JD, the price is a good one. In Norway it goes for 174,- Lots of improvements to SATA over PATA, but speed wise - I don't know. The SE WD2000JD has an internal data rate of 93.5 MBps = < ATA100. What drive would You be replacing?

 

[Dio]

I've just installed that very drive in my brand new PC (£75 quid-ish from Scan). It seems to fly, but the A64 3800+ is rather a lot faster than anything else I've ever had so that's not necessarily an indication. From BIOS handing over to XP login screen is a truly ridiculous 5-6 seconds, even after installing all the basic stuff (virus scanners, etc. - the notification area on the taskbar already has about 10 icons on it).

One thing I will say is that SATA-only is a faff, because you have to muck about with driver disks (floppies! In 2004?!) to get XP to install. That was a curveball I wasn't quite expecting. It's been far too long since I've built a new new PC.

I was also astounded by the amount of stuff that came with the motherboard. This was Scan's cheap 939 board (Asus A8V), and it had 2 UDMA 100 cables, 1 UDMA 33 cable, 1 floppy cable, 4 SATA cables, 2 molex to dual SATA power adaptors, two extra blanking plates with more ports, and a 802.11g PCI card with its external antenna! And here was me thinking I wasn't well equipped for SATA (I like to have a drawer full of connectors I don't use).

 

[digitalwanderer]

Not replacing, adding. I got a 40Gb maxtor & 80Gb WD 8Mb/cache both IDE and I was just gonna add this one to the mess.

 

[DarN]

Should I reset up my PC so that the new drive is the primary drive, is it quicker?

 

[bdotobdot2]

Is the SCSI driver loaded for your SATA controller already? If not, it won't see the drive til thats done. It came on a the floppy disk and CD that came with the ABIT NF7-S. (I have the same mobo)

 

[Dio]

It's a 'SCSI' driver rather than a SCSI driver.

(But Windows is just as equally terminology borked as anything else in this area, AFAIK).

I don't think there's any point changing things that work. This SATA drive is on a different controller, the only contention is (should be?) on the Northbridge-Southbridge bus which would be the same wherever it was.

Should I ask why on earth you need 320G of HD space? I am managing perfectly acceptably on 30G - I only got this bloody massive thing because it was the sensible price/capacity point. OK, I have a server with 160G but that's only half full (and half of what's there is probably shite)...

 

[John Reynolds]

Should I ask why on earth you need 320G of HD space? I am managing perfectly acceptably on 30G.

I can fill 30 GB right up with game installs alone, not to mention the 1.5+ GB of mail, MP3s, and personal files I backup and restore when re-imaging my PC.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Should I ask why on earth you need 320G of HD space? I am managing perfectly acceptably on 30G - I only got this bloody massive thing because it was the sensible price/capacity point. OK, I have a server with 160G but that's only half full (and half of what's there is probably shite)...

I'm as hell and it's easier to just buy more storage than cleaning up all me virtual drives.

Seriously, more room never hurts! I've been wanting to throw together a DVD of family movies since I got a DVD burner, but viddy editing takes up a lot of GBs. I also tend to go a bit towards the "insane" side on file-sharing, I get into a tv show I never watched before and if I like it I end up downloading anywhere from 3 to 13 seasons of it.

Games can take a chunk too. Screw that 30GB of games, I have had times when it's over 60GB. (I tend to like to have a lot of games fully installed on my hard drive ready to play, I tend to bounce around 'tween games.)

I wanted this monster (at least I consider it a monster!) HD so I could actually start cleaning up and organizing my other two, a nice big place to store stuff on neatly and then just wipe the other drives.

(Oh, I also use my PC as the primary back-up for the other 3 family PCs....that can take up a bit of a chunk too.)

It's an awful lot of space I won't argue, but I prefer too much space to too little and this will give me the opportunity to free up the 60 & 80GB drives for other things. (Mebbe build some new systems around 'em or something...I don't know yet. Did I mention this was an impulse? )

 

[digitalwanderer]

Install was a breeze, the only bad thing was noticing that I had two 80Gb drives in Bubbles currently. (I must have tossed the 60Gb into me daughter's rig....I told ya I was sloppy with me drives! )

It's the SE WD2000JD, so I'm happy.

 

[Dave Baumann]

One thing I will say is that SATA-only is a faff, because you have to muck about with driver disks (floppies! In 2004?!) to get XP to install. That was a curveball I wasn't quite expecting. It's been far too long since I've built a new new PC.

I believe this depends on the BIOS and chipset - some will just be recognised as a standard IDE.

I've recently changed my test rig over to a 120GB SATA drive and need to reinstall every time I review a different board; I've also been swapping this between the three test platforms that I'm currently using. IIRC, it goes like this:

Intel 875: Windows install CD will recognise the SATA drive after some faffing in the BIOS.
VIA K8T800 PRO (A64 939): Requires a driver floppy to recnognise (bugger!)
Intel 925X: No faffing required, Windows boot CD recognises and installs straight off.

Our testing shows that the chipset does have some considerable performance differences as well:
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/intel/925/index.php?p=12

Generally speaking, you should be getting more performance than from an PATA drive. Remember, though, some drives are bridged which probably limits the potential performance, and you also won't get native command queuing with a bridged drive (I don't know if the drive you have is bridged or no Dig).

 

[John Reynolds]

In fact, the vast majority of current 'SATA' drives are bridged.

 

[Dio]

One other minor point on that WD - I found it was running a touch on the warm side for my liking. I used an old trick of mine: adjusted it so it is angled downwards at about 30 degrees, direct into the path of the case front fan.

From 'only just cool enough to touch' to 'room temperature' in one easy step.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I don't know if it's bridged or not, but after I got it installed windows didn't recognize it until I dropped into old school DOS and did an "Fdisk" to find it and build a primary partition onto it. (How does one do that in XP? Can one do that in XP? :|)

I don't know if it's faster or if it's because I formatted this one in NTFS rather than FAT32 like me other drives, but when I uncompressed a movie download this morning and did the old Isobuster "extract mpeg2 frames only" trick on it the sucker just FLEW! Much faster than me old drives!

It's a SE WD2000JD, I don't know if it's bridged or not but I think I like it a whole bunch and as impulse purchases go I feel it's a good one. (That and it's in and functioning under the wife's radar, BIIIIIG plus. 8) )

I have it all connected by the new style sATA connectors and it's running like a champ in perfect harmony with me 2 80GBs and DVD burner....and I still got room for another IDE device and another sATA one! (I LOVE the NF7-s rev2, sweeeeeeet mobo!)

Thanks for all the input all, next I'll pick your brains about wireless networking. (I was going to buy a Linksys access point (g) and an air-card for a laptop to help me son's friends parents set-up their internet for sharing in their house....but as I was getting ready to check out I saw the HD and changed me plans. I was planning on helping someone out and being nice, instead I got all selfish. )

 

[digitalwanderer]

One other minor point on that WD - I found it was running a touch on the warm side for my liking. I used an old trick of mine: adjusted it so it is angled downwards at about 30 degrees, direct into the path of the case front fan.

From 'only just cool enough to touch' to 'room temperature' in one easy step.

I read in a few reviews it ran a bit hot too, so I put it in the second slot from the bottom in me case positioned directly in front of my backside 92mm intake fan so it's right in a cool air breeze. (My case has got EXCELLENT airflow; I worked my nuggers off with an old drill, some tinsnips, and me faithful channel-locks try and keep me mods pretty this time and it's a big improvement from the last case from an esthetic standpoint whilst still retaining the same great functionality as me last one...I'm pretty pleased with the results.)

I'm still trying to figure out exactly why I thougth I needed all this space, but even if I can't figure it out I'm glad I got it....more space is always good.

 

[Broken Hope]

I don't know if it's bridged or not, but after I got it installed windows didn't recognize it until I dropped into old school DOS and did an "Fdisk" to find it and build a primary partition onto it. (How does one do that in XP? Can one do that in XP? :|)

I don't know if it's faster or if it's because I formatted this one in NTFS rather than FAT32 like me other drives, but when I uncompressed a movie download this morning and did the old Isobuster "extract mpeg2 frames only" trick on it the sucker just FLEW! Much faster than me old drives!

It's a SE WD2000JD, I don't know if it's bridged or not but I think I like it a whole bunch and as impulse purchases go I feel it's a good one. (That and it's in and functioning under the wife's radar, BIIIIIG plus. 8) )

I have it all connected by the new style sATA connectors and it's running like a champ in perfect harmony with me 2 80GBs and DVD burner....and I still got room for another IDE device and another sATA one! (I LOVE the NF7-s rev2, sweeeeeeet mobo!)

Thanks for all the input all, next I'll pick your brains about wireless networking. (I was going to buy a Linksys access point (g) and an air-card for a laptop to help me son's friends parents set-up their internet for sharing in their house....but as I was getting ready to check out I saw the HD and changed me plans. I was planning on helping someone out and being nice, instead I got all selfish. )

How do you mean windows didn't recognise it? You mean it didn't show up in my computer? That's because you have to partition it first, if you right click on my computer, click manage then goto disk management it would have let you partition the drive etc.

 

[digitalwanderer]

You mean it didn't show up in my computer? That's because you have to partition it first, if you right click on my computer, click manage then goto disk management it would have let you partition the drive etc.

Thanks! I never knew that, I just always used DOS and fdisk....now I think I can live finally without any residue 98se fall backs.

 

[Vadi]

@Dio:
HDD's are not designed for that. They should be placed horizontally or vertically.

 

[Dio]

Very interesting. Where did you see this information? I'm intrigued as to the reason why - uneven bearing wear perhaps?

Does this affect laptop HD's too?