The Serial-ATAII technology

I´m going to buy two hd´s to mount in a raid and i´m looking for this two models:

- Seagate 250 Gb Serial-ATA/150 NCQ (8.0 ms time access)
- Samsung 250 Gb Serial-ATAII/300 NCQ (8.9 ms time access)

Which hd you think could give more performance?. Anyone have a Serial-ATAII hd?, this hd´s seems to have a bigger time access, but maybe get more performace because his bandwidth. The two models have approx the same prize.

Which model you would buy?

Fastest would be the Samsung, if numbers are what matters.

Your best bet would be to check out some reviews though, and actual benchmarks (not PC Mark or anything, look for some Business Mark or something, which are based on reality).

Of those, I'd get the Seagate - put simply, they're the more reputable hard drive manufacturer. They've got a good reputation.

Personally, I'd grab a couple of Western Digital Raptors, if they're a similar price. Only 74gb each, but they're 10,000rpm, and blow all the other SATA hard drives away for speed. They also have a 5 year warranty. You can also get the 36gb ones, but they're slightly slower... they're still faster than the 7,200 drives, and they're quite a bit cheaper. You'll only get 70gb of space overall though.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2005 03:03PM by gav.

hm, I need this hard disks to work in video editing, so I need at least 500 Gb for my work, games and other stuff. Could you give me any link to any review or benchmark of this technology?. You think the Samsung hd is a lot faster than Seagate?.

BTW, finally I bought the Asus A8N SLI-Premium

/edit

And what about Hitachi?, they make also Serial-ATAII hard drives, but without NCQ protocol I think...





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2005 03:22PM by Borjaserrano.

No idea of any specific reviews. I normally do a google search of the model + "conclusion" which tends to help filter out places like kelkoo and other price check sites.

Thanks, I ordered two Seagates already but at last time I doubt if the S-ATAII could be a better bet. Finally I´ll get the Seagates.

SATA has 150mbps of available bandwidth, and I'm yet to see a (lets say reasonably priced for arguments sake) hard disk that can churn data out that fast. The advantage of so much bandwidth though is SATA can be daisy chained, so you could run 2 drives on the same channel without any performance loss.

With SATA2, you could in theory daisy chain 4 drives on the same channel, and have the same speed as 2 daisy chained on a SATA channel.

That's my understanding of it anyway. Hope I'm not wrong

Glyn - i'm not sure if SATA2 allows daisy chaining, i think it's only SATA 2.5, but don't quote me on that, i'm very likely wrong

As for the advantage of SATA300 (or SATA2 - they aren't the same thing, SATA300 is based on SATA1 but with twice the badwidth and various other improvements...again, don't quote me on this) There are several websites out there which will cover this in more detail, i've actually read conflicting reports on different sites, which is why i'm confused.

If you want bandwidth go with SATA300, although i'm not sure you'll see a huge improvement as most 7,200rpm drives have a data rate slower than SATA150. Faster seek time is good for loading lots of small files, like games often do.

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SKEL

You can accuse a person of just about anything and get away with it, as long as you don't call them a lousy lover or bad driver. -Jackie Stewart

SATA II is a bit like AGP 8X...it's no use at all right now but in the future will be norm. If I were you I'd buy the SATA due to better performance. And when the time comes SATA II drives wouldn't be that expensive anyway.

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agp 8 is no use right now? you confused with pci-e?

No, he meant that there's little difference between agp 4x and 8x slots when using 8x cards, regardless of PCI E. Basically the bandwidth isnt utilised fully. Dunno if thats true with these latest agp cards anymore, cba to check either :p

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

Thanks guys, I´ll get the Seagates next week.