The do have Serial ATA controller cards out now. From what I've read, the performance isn't much better than stadard EIDE running at ATA133, but there are other benefits. Whether it's worth upgrading is up to you.

Try this article:

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.tomshard…"]Serial ATA[/]="http://www.tomshard…"]Serial ATA[/]

http://www.storagereview.com has plenty of stats.

IMO, its not there yet. I'd wait another year or so before I plunge. Yes the SATA has more bandwidth and a host of other advantages. But Rev 3 or 4 of the technology would be much worth waiting for, as they say SATA is very scalable.

Attractive new technology yes, but my price to performance scale isn't tipping yet.

mitz

I have 2x MAxtor S-ATA & 2x Maxtor ATA133 Drives.... and there isn't a huge performance difference (5-8% the most), but the prices are almost the same for SATA & ATA133 drives here, so the advandages that S-ATA drives have over standard drives are a good excuse to give those couple of euros (dollars) more (actually that's 5-10 Euros more for the same capacity). Almost all newer motherboards have S-ATA controlers built in, so why not give it a try ?

True indeed, unless we're talking about machines w/ no SATA . Then you have to factor in a PCI card and, as an upgrade to my ATA100 bus ant ATA133 drives, there's just not enough of a performance gain to make the leap.

I've heard that the only significant performance gains in the ATA vs. SATA (given the current technology) are realized in RAID configurations, where the bandwidth is actually made use of by multiple drives.

Remember, a hard drive may be ATA-150 or SATA-150 compatible, but even a 10K RPM EIDE drive will only achieve a maximum of around 70MB/s transfer rate. You're not even utilizing the available bandwidth.

That said, the biggest advantage with SATA to a power user in the current market is a dramatic improvement in internal airflow. Those big, bulky ribbon cables restrict airflow in a cabinet in a very big way. The SATA cable much smaller, and thus alleviates this long-standing issue.

Originally posted by Griffinator:
That said, the biggest advantage with SATA to a power user in the current market is a dramatic improvement in internal airflow. Those big, bulky ribbon cables restrict airflow in a cabinet in a very big way. The SATA cable much smaller, and thus alleviates this long-standing issue.

Yes, but they make "rounded" IDE cables now that are much easier to use and take up far less space that their flat-ribbon'd cousins. They cost about $10 a piece and you usually need three or more (2 for harddrives/CD-ROMs and one for the floppy) but they make a gigantic difference in air flow and cooling in the case.

Have you seen a SATA cable? I use those rounded ATA cables myself - but the SATA cables are miniscule even compared to those.

W.r.t. S-ATA, since my mobo had a connector for it already, I figured it'd be a nice way of keeping a spare IDE-slot. For instance for adding a cheap 5400rpm more quiet IDE HDD for backups etc.

I did read about some (Maxtor) S-ATA HDDS even being somewhat slower, but there may have been other factors. And hey, at such track counts it hardly matters for my purposes. But that may differ for others.

Bye,

Peter