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Quick Hard Drive Question

post #1 of 5
8/14/06 at 6:43pm
Thread Starter 
Whats diffrence between an ata, p-ata and s-ata HDD?

I'm looking at a notebook, and notice it had a p-ata. I know serial ata is the newest type but i realy no nothing about hard drive connections.

Thx
Sgt.McRuff
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post #2 of 5
8/14/06 at 6:56pm
basically, it has a different connector and different maximum data transfer rates (pata is 100 or 133 MB/s and sata is 150MB/s), though those rates are much higher than any of the current drives will really deliver, so they perform about the same. simple answer is the connector. i forget what the pin setup for sata is, but pata is something like a 40-pin connector, and sata is much fewer.

okay, here's what a notebook sata connection looks like: http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-048-02.JPG

and pata:
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-229-03.JPG
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post #3 of 5
8/14/06 at 9:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by yee245
basically, it has a different connector and different maximum data transfer rates (pata is 100 or 133 MB/s and sata is 150MB/s), though those rates are much higher than any of the current drives will really deliver, so they perform about the same. simple answer is the connector. i forget what the pin setup for sata is, but pata is something like a 40-pin connector, and sata is much fewer.

okay, here's what a notebook sata connection looks like: http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-048-02.JPG

and pata:
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...146-229-03.JPG

exactly what he said. there is almost no difference except for the connect. the max data transfer dont affect the speed at all. and sata can raid
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post #4 of 5
8/15/06 at 1:05am
well, i think you can raid pata, but you have to have extra hardware, not to mention that there aren't that many laptops that have raid, not to mention 2 hdd's either...

yeah, for reference to how drives are not going to max out the bus speed, um, a 400gb desktop drive (3.5" pata) that i have only has an average transfer rate of about i think it's 70MB/s, of 133MB/s max, so if a 7200rpm drive with higher capacity is only reading/writing that speed, a smaller drive spinning at the same or slower speed will definitely not fill the max bandwidth.
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post #5 of 5
8/15/06 at 3:18am
it is my understanding that the sata interface both supplies the harddrive power and transfers data so it requires one less cable than pata, which uses the ide cable + power cable. correct me if i am wrong. this is useful in desktops because you can reserve your ide and power cables for other types of drives like optical or whatnot. and sata II has a theoretical speed of 3.0 Gb/s max (that's bits, not bytes), but you will be hard pressed to find results anywhere close to this with today's computers where bottlenecks are aplenty. pata is just as good in most situations and the only difference is the interface connection on the drive that manufacturers swap out so they use the same platters and heads. pata used to be cheaper but currently the prices are pretty.
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