I'm All Sata!

Richard Dower

so here is the skinny, after my mental phase of having four WD Raptors in RAID 0 i decided to drop two of them. I don't need all that storage space and two drives are still damn impressive.

HD Tach say's i'm getting a read of 110MB/s and burst of 217.5MB/s so that's pretty good.

And there was also more "logic" to my decision, Western Digital are soon to release a single platter 74GB version of there new Raptors. It's identical to the new 150GB version with NCQ and 16MB cache, just a single platter with 74GB.

So i was thinking, if the benchmarks and reviews are better then the current FLC0 74GB drives i'd upgrade. Get two of the new 74GB drives and sell the current FLC0 drives i have.

Then i decided to dump anything IDE in my rig, i wanted an all SATA setup as this is the future and with Intel dropping all IDE connectors and support on there new ICH8 chipset it made sense.

With nVidia launching nForce5 to go with AMD's new AM2 socket it made even more sense. I am hoping nForce5 will implement proper ATAPI support for SATA optical drives, also note that nForce 5 has six SATA ports as standard and only one IDE channel support two drives.

So i got a Plextor 712SA for €50 off Komplett and it was the latest TLA #, 0107 dated April 2005. But i have to say setting this drive up and getting the bios options correct was a total b_*tch.

You need to check the motherboard compatiability list on the Plextor website, even then it's touch and go. You need to have the latest bios and drivers for everything right off the bat.

I am happy to report that both the nForce4 controller and Silicon Image 3114 controller recognised the drive and was detected within Windows correctly.

Some criteria that was crucial, it must be detected within bios, you must be able to boot from said drive, you must be able to install the operating system from scratch...all these criteria were met. But it took alot of trial and error to set the bios options correctly.

Next is within an installed OS, the drive has to be functional, Nero and Plextools must be able to use the drive and report it correctly, check. Nero CDSpeed and InfoToll must report and diagonose said drive, check.

I haven't done extensive testing as yet, i've burned a couple of CDR and DVD data disk, all good.

So right now things look promising, and i've ordered a Plextor 716SA as well. The 712SA will be my read only drive and 716SA my burner. I have also decided to drop the floppy drive, to that end i have ordered an NEC USB floppy drive (thanks gline).

Hopefully this will be able to be bootable in bios and able to install drivers off the floppy during the F6 stage of a fresh install, i do have an option in bios to set boot order to a USB-FDD

So all in all it's goobye to IDE!...and say hello to your SATA KING!

Drapper

Richard Dower wrote:

so here is the skinny, after my mental phase of having four WD Raptors in RAID 0 i decided to drop two of them. I don't need all that storage space and two drives are still damn impressive.

HD Tach say's i'm getting a read of 110MB/s and burst of 217.5MB/s so that's pretty good.

And there was also more "logic" to my decision, Western Digital are soon to release a single platter 74GB version of there new Raptors. It's identical to the new 150GB version with NCQ and 16MB cache, just a single platter with 74GB.

So i was thinking, if the benchmarks and reviews are better then the current FLC0 74GB drives i'd upgrade. Get two of the new 74GB drives and sell the current FLC0 drives i have.

Then i decided to dump anything IDE in my rig, i wanted an all SATA setup as this is the future and with Intel dropping all IDE connectors and support on there new ICH8 chipset it made sense.

With nVidia launching nForce5 to go with AMD's new AM2 socket it made even more sense. I am hoping nForce5 will implement proper ATAPI support for SATA optical drives, also note that nForce 5 has six SATA ports as standard and only one IDE channel support two drives.

So i got a Plextor 712SA for €50 off Komplett and it was the latest TLA #, 0107 dated April 2005. But i have to say setting this drive up and getting the bios options correct was a total b_*tch.

You need to check the motherboard compatiability list on the Plextor website, even then it's touch and go. You need to have the latest bios and drivers for everything right off the bat.

I am happy to report that both the nForce4 controller and Silicon Image 3114 controller recognised the drive and was detected within Windows correctly.

Some criteria that was crucial, it must be detected within bios, you must be able to boot from said drive, you must be able to install the operating system from scratch...all these criteria were met. But it took alot of trial and error to set the bios options correctly.

Next is within an installed OS, the drive has to be functional, Nero and Plextools must be able to use the drive and report it correctly, check. Nero CDSpeed and InfoToll must report and diagonose said drive, check.

I haven't done extensive testing as yet, i've burned a couple of CDR and DVD data disk, all good.

So right now things look promising, and i've ordered a Plextor 716SA as well. The 712SA will be my read only drive and 716SA my burner. I have also decided to drop the floppy drive, to that end i have ordered an NEC USB floppy drive (thanks gline).

Hopefully this will be able to be bootable in bios and able to install drivers off the floppy during the F6 stage of a fresh install, i do have an option in bios to set boot order to a USB-FDD

So all in all it's goobye to IDE!...and say hello to your SATA KING!

dude you need to get out more often ! get some fresh air !

Richard Dower

yeah, well...you shouldn't be posting on the internet then, with your 4800+ @ 2.8 and your overclocked 7800GTX.

:-)

Cuddlesworth

Id like to say those hard-drives are exciting but it just doesnt do it for me.

Richard Dower

SATA optical is cool:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Sources/Plextor_PX-716SA/Images/back_1.jpg

http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/drives/burners/plextor_px-712sa/IMAGE013.jpg

WizZard

I thought you had the 150gb versions of the Raptors?

DemonOfTheFall

SATA optical just doesnt do it for me. I'm sure I'll think otherwise when I have a giant rats nest of IDE running to my 4 burners in a month or two though...

Drapper

krazy_8s wrote:

Id like to say those hard-drives are exciting but it just doesnt do it for me.

second that ;-)

Richard Dower

WizZard wrote:

I thought you had the 150gb versions of the Raptors?

Nah, never said i had. All 74GB FLC0's.

poggy

Richard Dower wrote:

As much as four 150GB Raptors sound nice ....................................

Based on reviews of this new 74GB Raptor i may or may not sell these four and buy four more...does that make sense?

dude really thought you had them becausse you were already selling them to get these new ones:D

gline

all sata is a good idea, but i dont think id go through all the hassle of setting it up.

does the drive use an sata power cable aswell? or normal molex?

Richard Dower

See images above, booth the data and power are SATA.

Richard Dower

poggy wrote:

dude really thought you had them becausse you were already selling them to get these new ones:D

Nah, i said in a previous posting that i couldn't justifty the price tag of four 150GB drives, whereas i could four 74GB.

Considering i am going to sell two 74GB drives you can see i couldn't even justify that.

djmarkus

hmm.. your not going to get any more performance, and is 1 IDE cable such an eyesore really?

Thinking about it, if you have 1 SATA controller controlling everything it could be a bad idea as the IDE controller could control the opticals and the sata controller crontroling the hdds, but as the same controller does IDE aswell, i think it wont make much difference

Richard Dower

I know the performance is not any better, i have done alot of reading on the subject. As i said SATA optical is the future...hell even the XBOX360 uses an LG SATA optical.

That's the way things are moving, IDE will become obsolete over time, they look cool you've got alot less cables and clutter in the case, airflow is better etc.

And i like to have the latest and greatest, move with the times.

slade_x

gline wrote:

all sata is a good idea, but i dont think id go through all the hassle of setting it up.

It would also prove impossible to set up windows for some people, as its all well and good to be able to hit F6 and load SATA drivers for your hard drive, but if they had a SATA CD/DVD drive the windows setup wouldnt boot at all, since the loading of drivers comes after the Cd bootstrap.

So without legacy support for single Sata, people will be out of luck

Richard Dower

The SATA drive works the same as an normal ATAPI device, it's recnognised as a CD-ROM.

slade_x

Richard Dower wrote:

The SATA drive works the same as an normal ATAPI device, it's recnognised as a CD-ROM.

Then the chipset or sata controller you have has Legacy Sata Support, you wont ever have to worry about loading sata drivers unless you plan on raid volumes

Richard Dower

They have a SATA to PATA bridge chip inside, they are not native Serial ATA devices, i doubt we'll see such devices for awhile until chipsets and system bios support such things.

I still have to load drivers at the F6 stage for my RAID array.

slade_x

Richard Dower wrote:

They have a SATA to PATA bridge chip inside, they are not native Serial ATA devices, i doubt we'll see such devices for awhile until chipsets and system bios support such things.

I still have to load drivers at the F6 stage for my RAID array.

I never said they were native devices, your motherboard (im guessing Nforce4) provides legacy support for single/ standard SATA devices

Just like boards support legacy USB, which is 1.1, you can also enable 2.0 from the bios but it will only work in an OS with support for USB2.0 (ie, Windows XP w/ SP1)

You need a driver for raid as the board does not provide support to effectively recognize a raided volume for windows, thats what the driver is for, to designate that you are in fact using a raided volume, just like if you were raiding 2 PATA drives you will still need a driver but you dont need a driver for one standard PATA hard drive

astrofool

I'm all Sata barring one old pata cdr/dvd drive. The sata drive is picked up by windows initially when installing, but it loses it during the installation and I have to use the pata drive. PX716SA btw.

Richard Dower

Can only speak for my setup, hopefully over time better support within bios and chipsets will be implemented. This is why i bought the 712SA + 716SA, they could be used at a later stage if things didn't work.

Thankfully they did.

rsynnott

Have you considered talking to a psychiatrist?

Richard Dower

For?...i don't need to pay someone €150 an hour to tell me what i'm about. Why the need for certain folks to make things personal around here?

I don't see Wizzard or Rosco being advised to seek professional help, and they are leagues above me in terms of being techno geeks.