A rather popular mis-conception that really needs to be dismissed
A.S.A.P. is that SATA is superior to ATA.
It is not.
The reasons originally quoted by most manufacturers in the industry
around 5-6 years ago when SATA was originally Developed:
Cost
ATA consumes more real-estate from both the semiconductor and
motherboard perspective due to its complexity and the size of the
physical bus connections (more pins required for the connection)
Complexity
As ATA Bus speeds increase, the mechanisms to keep the timing correct
across data channels becomes increasingly harder to engineer,
increasing the cost of engineering and the size of the chips- i.e.
more real-estate would be needed
Power
The primary power consumption from a drive isn't it's motor, that only
consumes a few watts to maintain it's momentum - especially as drive
platters have decreased in mass over time. The ATA chipset, cache, and
the armature for moving the heads consume the most power. And as the
Bus speed increases so would their power draw.
SATA was supposed to save motherboard space from both the chipset and
connector size( saving cost ); lower the level of engineering required
(saving cost ); and lower the power consumption (saving cost).
All of these only benefit the Manufacturers cost of production, not
the consumer, as most people who have moved to SATA can attest to
generally higher cost.
The only reasons being quoted as a consumer benefit from the
technology back in the begining was "ease of installation" and "cost
reduction".
There was never any talk of it being better than ATA. In fact there
was a particularly fun comment from one analyst about how " this is
really just a move to fewer wires " and that " there is some doubt as
to whether SATA will scale to higher speeds than ATA "
You can probably still find the articles about this in the EETimes archives.
On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:48:21 -0700, Daniel Brown <
majorshitbird@cox.net> wrote:
> I have the pleasure of owning a WD Raptor SATA drive and highly
> recommend one if you're going to go SATA. I have not tried installing
> linux on this drive and do not know if there would be any conflicts, but
> as for performance check these specs form SiSoftware SANDRA.
> 36 GB WD Raptor SATA
> < Benchmark Breakdown >
> Buffered Read: 41 MB/s
> Sequential Read: 46 MB/s
> Random Read: 28 MB/s
> Buffered Write: 76 MB/s
> Sequential Write: 47 MB/s
> Random Write: 35 MB/s
> Average Access Time: 14 ms (estimated)
>
> 40 GB WD ATA
> < Benchmark Breakdown >
> Buffered Read: 23 MB/s
> Sequential Read: 37 MB/s
> Random Read: 18 MB/s
> Buffered Write: 91 MB/s
> Sequential Write: 37 MB/s
> Random Write: 27 MB/s
> Average Access Time: 29 ms (estimated)
>
> 80 GB Maxtor ATA
> < Benchmark Breakdown >
> Buffered Read: 23 MB/s
> Sequential Read: 28 MB/s
> Random Read: 15 MB/s
> Buffered Write: 91 MB/s
> Sequential Write: 28 MB/s
> Random Write: 22 MB/s
> Average Access Time: 31 ms (estimated)
> The purchase price was $99 with a $30 mail in rebate. It makes a great
> Windows disk. I have one installation of Fedora on each of the other
> slower drives. Heat might be a problem in a smaller case, you would need
> to add a fan to be safe.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Joe
> and Colleen Huber
> Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:05 PM
> To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: SATA vs UATA vs ...?
>
> I feel like an idiot asking this... throw caution to the wind... what's
> the
> difference between SATA and UATA 133?
>
> Long story short - I bought a HP (arrived a few hours ago), I want to
> put
> some flavor of Linux on it, was concerned about voiding the warranty if
> I do
> that... so I went with a 40G drive (smallest available) and figured I
> would
> pull it out, stick it on the shelf and replace it with something else
> (COSTCO is selling Maxtor 200G Ultra ATA 133s for 135.00). If I have any
> hardware issues and need to avail myself of the warranty I'll just swap
> the
> original drive back in. The HP shipped with a SATA.
>
> SATA and UATA "interchangable?"
> Was a little overwhelmed looking at the install info on their site this
> morning but I'm thinking Debian (I suppose with the orignal drive on the
> shelf I can't mess to much up while learning...)
>
> joe
>
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