Serial ATA Drives Mature and Get Faster 189
MojoDog writes "Serial ATA drives are still as scarce as hen's teeth but what models are
trickling out from Seagate and Maxtor, are beginning to look promising.
This article and performance analysis shows the new DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA
Hard Drive putting up some impressive figures in standard SATA 150 and SATA 150 RAID
0 configurations."
Hidden wiring/tidiness (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hidden wiring/tidiness (Score:2, Funny)
Well, depending on where you're "working" I recommend using a dry tissue to clean up the mess first and then go over the area with a damp tissue afterwards to sanitize the area. You may have repeat these steps in order to clean up the entire mess.
Bluetooth Wires! (or no wires) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bluetooth Wires! (or no wires) (Score:2)
Re:Bluetooth Wires! (or no wires) (Score:4, Funny)
Until your little sister walks in and picks up the hard drive for your web server to make a good doorstop.
Michael
Re:Bluetooth Wires! (or no wires) (Score:1, Funny)
Induction power? Maybe... (Score:1)
I think it could make for really nice connectors, though. Especially in extreme environments, where dirt and grime are likely to get in between the contacts. You have something like teflon-coated springs, to serve as air-core inductors. This has the double-benefit of
Re:Bluetooth Wires! (or no wires) (Score:2)
Re:Hidden wiring/tidiness (Score:2)
Uhhh.... Yeah. [apple.com]
Re:Hidden wiring/tidiness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hidden wiring/tidiness (Score:3, Interesting)
Painful (Score:5, Funny)
The sound you can hear is the echo of the breaking of the hearts of ten thousand grammar nazis.
Seems like they say wait... (Score:5, Informative)
Does being an early adopter really have much benefit besides bragging rights?
I was planning on waiting anyhow, this just seems to confirm my original instincts.
Re:Seems like they say wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
Curiosity. Somewhat like nabbing and installing a beta copy of some software and checking out where it's at. If I had the cash and felt the satisfaction of my own curiosity was worth it, I'd have a few SATA drives running, just for the hell of it.
It gives some geektypes something to talk about, ponder over, and throw opinions around on where stuff's heading.
Then yes, there's bragging rights
It's nothing too serious, really. People are people and some of us just like new stuff
Re:Seems like they say wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Early adopting hardware seems to be a risk, as you're spending money, and you have to be pretty lucky to get it for free.
If I had the money to burn however....
Re:Seems like they say wait... (Score:2)
ostiguy
Re:Seems like they say wait... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Seems like they say wait... (Score:2)
More Information (Score:5, Informative)
Cnet [com.com]
SATA and ISCSI [infoworld.com]
Intel Dev Paper [intel.com]
Maxtor White Paper [maxtor.com]
Serial ATA Working Group [serialata.org]
Re:More Information (Score:2, Informative)
The size of future computers... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I wonder if we will ever get to the point of performance where a drive can sit next to a computer and communicate via a (secure) wireless connection - either RF or IR (or ??).
Of course, then the above phrase will be that the size of future computers will be limited to their component's antennas.
Basically, I've *got* to find some way to get rid of the huge clump of cables under my desk!
Re:The size of future computers... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The size of future computers... (Score:1)
And get rid of the huge clump of bank-notes under your desk while you`re at it!
'Maturing' offers more promise than 'innovation' (Score:3, Informative)
Case in point: while stories of (distant future) storage technology consistently fill all the typical industry rags, a very real technique is already available and well-known to insiders. DVDA, one of the newer ideas that has taken off, promises to roughly quadruple conventional hard-medium storage techniques. Although more prone to tolerance faults because the scheme involves replacing the typical single-head approach with four carefully-positioned around the box, the increase in input capability has lead many to believe that consumer demand for DVDA will rise rapidly as it begins to hit the shelves in larger numbers.
We've all chuckled over the "640K is enough for anybody" quote, but the reverse approach of industry visionaries who predict teraflops of holographic storage or similar pie-in-the-sky schemes is similarly unlikely to lead us to tomorrow's breakthroughs. Don't be fooled into thinking that we've fully exploited the potential of current techniques.
Re:'Maturing' offers more promise than 'innovation (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I would have some doubt in visionaries who measure storage in floating point operations per second.
Re:Yeeesh (Score:2)
Slightly Off-Topic (Score:4, Interesting)
Id love to see the end of all IDE cables in my computer. Im using a small form factor(sff) shuttle, and one of the problems with circulating air is the IDE cable. Also is there any plans/ideas about all the wires coming out of the PSU, as in any way to make those wires thinner and less obstrusive(sp?)
thanks for any and all responses.
later,
Re:Slightly Off-Topic (Score:1, Funny)
It works, and looks seriously cool, like some bizarre tentacled thing stretching across a vast post-apocalyptic landscape of capacitors, ICs, smt components and tracks.
Re:Slightly Off-Topic (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slightly Off-Topic (Score:2, Insightful)
Eliminating the negative voltages that aren't really used anymore for much could help. Most modern implementations of RS-232 cheat and use inverted TTL anyway.
Why serial ATA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I would welcome any replacement to conventional IDE / ATA which has been the bane of my life. I couldn't count the number of times I've had to screw around swapping cards and drives in order to accomodate that ribbon. I will be happy to see that particular technology go the way of the dodo.
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I'm aware IEEE 1394 (firewire) is a readily available standard and assuming specific chipsets are documented there should be no barriers to making Linux talk happily with such devices. I'm no kernel engineer but I would guess that great big chunks of their bus / device abstraction are readily applicable to firewire too.
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:5, Informative)
Firewire gives a maximum throughput of 400Mb/second (50MB/second), with future versions giving 800Mb/second (100MB/second). :)
SeialATA gives a maximum throughput of 150MB/second, with future versions giving 300MB/second and then 600MB/second.
SerialATA is MUCH faster. Now granted, modern Hard Drives can't get anywhere near 150MB/second, but one day they will
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020827/ind
A review of USB 2.0 and Firewire drives at Tom's site indicates that real world throughput is bottlenecked by the interface to about HALF the theoretical max.
Why so slow? Is it all overhead? Poor optimization? Should we always assume that real world performance is approx half that of the theoretical max?
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:2)
Also, Firewire is designed to supply power over the interface - Serial ATA dedicates lines for this, which aren't optional.
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:5, Informative)
ATA can be connected in very few ways to only one controller. It therefore has a nice, simple protocol.
The simpler the protocol, the higher the throughput, because you're not having to send messages and wait for replies to work out where things are going.
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:2)
Re:Why serial ATA? (Score:2)
solid state? (Score:3, Interesting)
-Kevin
Re:solid state? (Score:2)
Re:solid state? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly - credit cards have been using the same magnetic strip "technology" since the early 70s.
Japan and Europe have smart cards in wide use, but the U.S. lags. We still manually input name and address information into disparate point of sales systems for every vendor. That's just sad.
-Kevin
Re:solid state? (Score:2)
Uhhh... We still input our pin numbers as well. I wouldn't consider that a bad thing. Inputting an address that is required to match with the CC company's record is the best basic security, and the only security that CC have right now.
You've got the same mindset as all the "experts" that say that Japanese consumers are so far ahead of the USA in technology... as if buying another crappy little use
Re:solid state? (Score:2)
Well, gee... Ya think? Then again, an armed guard would be even more security, and so you assume we should all have armed guards?
You'v
How quaint. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:solid state? (Score:2)
What about drive failures? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about someone making a hard drive that isn't going to give up after a year? Or are these guys only in the business to sell me new hard drives after a year? Many are also reducing their warranties from 3 or 5 years to one year. Have they no faith in their own products?
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I have a solution for you - or rather Western Digital do. It's 10,000 RPM, 5.2ms average seek time, SerialATA 150, 1.2 million hours MTBF, and a 5 year warranty! With those stats, it should really fly if they've put some effort into the controller...
It hasn't been released yet, but I'm going to wait and see what the reviews say before upgrading my machine - it looks good on paper.
They have a press release here [westerndigital.com].
Nick...
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:1)
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:1)
MaxLine II should be less vapor than the WD offering at least, they had planned to have it out 1Q 2003, but it seems they are still hard to find. Some places are accepting orders, however.
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:2, Insightful)
I would like too see any relatively complex machine last 137 years without repair, even under ideal conditions. Especially something as sensitive as a hard disk.
Re:Product page on WD site for the drive (Score:2)
I think it's the only drive of it's class around and should be compared to 10,000 RPM SCSI drives rather than ATA drives. I can't find any other 10,000 RPM Serial ATA drives anywhere... The price is probably loaded because of it's uniqueness - it'll go down with time I'm sure. Besides - if it's fast enough that you no longer need to buy a RAID array to edit your video - then you'll have made a saving.
Nick...
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:4, Interesting)
The reviewers clearly felt that the Maxtor SATA drive was well-built and that there was no reason that Maxtor SHOULDN'T stand behind it for longer.
Personally, I think that hard drive manufacturers aren't standing behind their drives for longer for a few reasons. One is that margins are razor thin. You'll be able to pick up an 80GB Maxtor SATA-150 drive for $80-$125, once they begin to ship in quantity. Just a few years ago, the top-of-the-line ATA drives (whatever their size is is irrelevant..I'm talking line positioning here) were selling more than 3 times that price. Inflation has gone up, but technology has deflated in price quickly. (Personally, I'm waiting for them to come free in my box of Lucky Charms(TM).
Re:What about drive failures? (Score:2)
Get SCSI (Score:3, Interesting)
Notice: You will pay for SCSI reliability.
Re:Get SCSI (Score:5, Funny)
Warning: Never put Seagate Cheetah drives where there are people. They sound like a circular saw trying to cut though a piece of reinforced concrete. Really not a very nice sound. At all.
Nick...
Re:Get SCSI (Score:2)
Re:Get SCSI (Score:2)
If you want quiet/fast drives anyone (normal ATA) I highly recommend the Western Digital JB range (8mb cache versions). You can hardly hear them and they seem to be very quick compared to my IBM equivalent. It might be psychological though - now that I don't get a grinding noise everytime I do something, everything seems much quicker
Nick...
Re:Get SCSI (Score:2)
Toms Hardware (Score:5, Informative)
Summary: "Extremely High Performance, Excessively Short Warranty Period"
Nick...
Re:Toms Hardware (Score:4, Funny)
Already? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just one question... (Score:1)
Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Informative)
In the days of yore, when you could send only a few bits per second down a wire, which is serial, it was noticed that you could lump eight wires side by side, send one part of a byte down each wire, and boom, you've got parallel. Like this:
Serial:
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
Parallel:
001100010
Now, however, they've noticed that our ability to send bits down a wire is so improved, you're actually wasting time by trying to synchronize between eight separate wires; it's faster to just blitz the 8 bits down one wire.
Hence, this new ATA is serial, whereas (E)IDE is parallel (those flat ribbon cables give it away nicely, don't they?)
Re:Just one question... (Score:1)
About ATA drives (Score:4, Informative)
ATA = AT Attachment
AT = Advanced Technology (as in IBM's first PC)
Basically the old IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) and the later UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) drives are parallel ATA devices, that is data is sent over multiple 'lines' Serial ATA send data over 1 'line' but at a much faster rate.
In theory parallel transmission should be faster, more lines = more bandwidth but in practice serial connections are quicker as they don't suffer from cross talk and other complications (big cables - easily damaged)
.
Not much diffrence right now...... (Score:2, Interesting)
Parallel ATA legacy connectors (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:3, Funny)
For your next trick, try posting comments about Win3.11 when the review of the next Windows appears.
Also, make sure when Mac OSX Panther comes out that you refer to disappointments with System 7.
mod parent up or it's parent down (Score:1)
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:1)
Er, what did they expect ? Internally, the IDE DiamondMax Plus 9 is identical to the SATA one. There's obviously not gonna be any performance differ
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming normal use (ie, non-RAID, one device), then master-slave/peer-to-peer makes no difference to performance, for obvious reasons. The physical discs themselves are the limiter - the interface has nothing to do with it.
A Drive to drive copy will be much faster with scsi than with IDE or SATA.
How do you figur
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:2)
Re:Not that promissing... (Score:2)
Re:Not that promising... (Score:5, Interesting)
The one versus three year warranty is an interesting one. The trend of IDE manufacturers like Maxtor and Western Digital is to offer one year for "normal" IDE drives and three years for "Special Edition" (read: 8MB cache) drives. I'm not sure how this stacks up with SATA drives though.
Didn't drives used to come with a five year warranty ? Did I just make that up, or am I showing my age ?
Of course if, like me, you live in New Zealand, none of this makes any difference anyway. Under the consumer protection legislation here the seller of the drive must warrant it for the expected "useful life" of the drive, which is certainly longer than one year.
Re:Not that promising... (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, if anyone wants to explain the physics behind that, that would be really cool.
Re:Not that promising... (Score:5, Funny)
Freezer Gnomes. The same ones who make the ice disappear and food get freezer burn. The do wonders with gum in hair as well. Amazing little creatures if you ask me.
my understanding of the freezer trick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:my understanding of the freezer trick (Score:2)
Quicker than freezing (Score:4, Interesting)
This tends to get the drive past whatever dead spot is preventing the spin up - they have rarely failed to come up when I use this trick. Of course when it spins up you then quickly remove all data that has any meaning for you since if it did this once. .
No worries about fingers stuck to the frozen drive or about condensation.
Disclaimer:
Use this trick in moderation, not responsible for lost data, broken wrists/fingers, or errant "smart" bombs.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't say much for SCSI since they're so absurdly expensive per MB that I'd rather take a chance with my data than pay SCSI's going rates... But umm, yea... Modern IDE drives lose data. The most common problem isn't that they crash, it's that they end up with one or more inaccessable sector(s), you run the included recertification utility and it restores your drive to error-free status but it also *fucks up the filesystem in the process.
End result: Lost data.
With how often I've seen this happen with current 40GB, 80GB and 120GB drives, I'm beginning to think RAID isn't really a luxury anymore.
* I couldn't say fscks here, it might get taken in the wrong context.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:2)
SCSI is only slightly more expensive than IDE. I will admit that, since it's so un-popular (for reasons beyond me) 99% of shops do not have inexpensive SCSI drives. But they are out there. Thanks to the internet, you can find some if you look hard enough.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:2)
SCSI Drives are more expensive because they are tested individually, because of VOLUME ISSUES, not because the tests are any more robust!
Makes no sense for a company to build a 100-drive-wide testing array for SCSI drives, because so many fewer are produced.
This drives up costs considerably.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:4, Insightful)
Typically you pay at least four times as much per GB if you buy SCSI instead of IDE.
inexpensive SCSI drives.
Though a massproduced SCSI drive should be possible at prices comparable to an IDE drive of the same size and speed, they are very rare. In fact I never saw one. So I guess a lot of people would be happy if you would tell us where they can be bought.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:2)
No... It's just that 4x cheaper IDE drives are easy to find.
Ah, I see. You must be an expert then.
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:serial ATA rox! (Score:2)
Re:*** WAR THREAD *** (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Grrrrr Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grrrrr Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want to know is why you would expect anyone other than yourself to pay for it?. You obviously wanted xserves, so you got xserves and you paid for xserves. Is there some hidden part of the sale contract that makes you believe you're entitled to cheap future tech?
Re:Grrrrr Apple (Score:2, Funny)
Either that, or they should provide a roadmap of all technologies they plan on releasing for the next 10 years, with a timetable.
Oh yeah, and be sure to include that schedule for unscheduled downtime and natural disasters. CNN might want a copy.
Re:"Per say" (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Notes from the field...? (Score:4, Informative)
I put a pair of barracuda Vs in my rebuilt (WinXP) PC this weekend, as I was rebuilding anyway, and managed to get hold of a couple. I mainly use my PC for audio recording and editing.
Currently I have them in a RAID 1 conf as a mirrored data volume on an ASUS A7NX Delux & AthlonXP 2700+ (I do a lot of AV work for my band, and have had a few disks go down in the past 3 years, so I'm sacrificing the potential performance boost of RAID 0 for the piece of mind - I have plently of space anyhow.
First thoughts - well installation was easy, cable routing and tidying was MUCH easier - the only niggle being the power adapters adding another point of connector failure and more length to already long power cables. This has also allowed me to put my PATA DVD rom and DVD -R drive on seperate IDE channels.
So far, I haven't run any real benchmarks, apart from 'Well it all feels just as responsive as with PATA 133 drives'
Well, I left it doing a 24 hour set of video renders last night (partially as a burn-in test, partially because they needed doing) so I should see later if any major problems have shown up.
Re:Notes from the field...? (Score:2)
Re:Notes from the field...? (Score:2)
Re:Notes from the field...? (Score:1)
Why was this flaimbate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Notes from the field...? (Score:3, Informative)
The stupid 15-pin power cable connector broke and the SATA then melted. Something shorted out or went to 0 volts and the SATA drive went hyper, turned red-hot and melted.
Because of voltage/current spikes I also lost the 3 PATA drives(they chatter now). I just replaced the power-supply because I think the power supply has been compromised.
Do not use the SATA power cables if you can, instead try t