Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations SkipVought on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Newer IDE drives ATA100 instead of 133
- Thread starter felixc
- Start date
Hi Felixc,
I have noticed the same thing. There is very few ata133 drives on the market any more that I have noticed either. My distributors aren't carrying much of them at all.
Don't know exactly why it is like that but my guess is because of the new standard of drives being sata now.
I have noticed the same thing. There is very few ata133 drives on the market any more that I have noticed either. My distributors aren't carrying much of them at all.
Don't know exactly why it is like that but my guess is because of the new standard of drives being sata now.
That's pretty much it I think. ATA100 drives will work on an ATA133 controller with no problems. ATA133 drives probably weren't significantly faster than ATA100 drives to begin with. The only people who were usually buying them were the performance junkies/bragging rights guys. And of course, if you're going to steer people towards a top of the line drive, you want to steer them towards SATA and avoid ATA altogether.
To be honest, the mechanics between most PATA drives and SATA drives are pretty similar. It's just that there are more features with SATA drives, such as NCQ (Native Command Queueing) that make the drive a bit faster than their IDE counterparts.
The faster interface that SATA gives you (150MB/s or 300MB/s) only impacts RAID arrays that need it. A single drive will rarely come close to 100MB/s transfer rates and will average usually around 50-55MB/s.
As for ATA133, it was better than ATA100 for pretty much the same reasons. Only RAID configurations used to break the 100MB/s mark, making the extra headroom that ATA133 provided useful in IDE RAID arrays. However, RAID wasn't that popular back then on workstations as much as it was in servers. When SATA was released soon after, it quickly made RAID an attractive (and easy) option for home users. As a result, everyone just kind of forgot the importance of ATA133 and it was quickly shoved to the side.
Maxtor was the only company who really made a push for it. In fact, I don't think you'll find any Western Digital ATA133 drives. I think Seagate was the only other one who made them.
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
The faster interface that SATA gives you (150MB/s or 300MB/s) only impacts RAID arrays that need it. A single drive will rarely come close to 100MB/s transfer rates and will average usually around 50-55MB/s.
As for ATA133, it was better than ATA100 for pretty much the same reasons. Only RAID configurations used to break the 100MB/s mark, making the extra headroom that ATA133 provided useful in IDE RAID arrays. However, RAID wasn't that popular back then on workstations as much as it was in servers. When SATA was released soon after, it quickly made RAID an attractive (and easy) option for home users. As a result, everyone just kind of forgot the importance of ATA133 and it was quickly shoved to the side.
Maxtor was the only company who really made a push for it. In fact, I don't think you'll find any Western Digital ATA133 drives. I think Seagate was the only other one who made them.
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
cdogg
I have to say I thought it would, but (maybe I'm unlucky) most SATA RAID arrays I've set up have had issues of one sort or another - and the RAID setup interface is always different, and not always user friendly to use.
end of whinge!
I have to say I thought it would, but (maybe I'm unlucky) most SATA RAID arrays I've set up have had issues of one sort or another - and the RAID setup interface is always different, and not always user friendly to use.
end of whinge!
I have built a lot of entry servers with onboard sata raid and yes it is usually horrible. But if you spend the bucks for an addonics or intel raid card, they usually have a nice web interface and configuration is pretty smooth. The more higher end new servers have all been of course switched to SAS.
**Stay away from any broadcom chipset RAID controllers! They are horrible.
**Stay away from any broadcom chipset RAID controllers! They are horrible.
OK, OK! I knew I would get reamed for making that comment one way or another!
![[rofl2]](/data/assets/smilies/rofl2.gif "[rofl2] [rofl2]")
The point is that having the option integrated at practically no extra cost is what I'm talking about. Yes, I've had my share of fits with it too, but it's a lot like USB and how it eventually patched itself up in the end. Just think about how much "convenience" and how many "device options" we have today because of USB.
I wouldn't dare rely on an integrated broadcom controller for a 24/7 server. But for my personal workstations that are backed up regularly, it's good enough for now. Luckily my main PC at home hasn't seen any major issues with its RAID 0 SATA array <fingers crossed>. It's been a year and a half now...
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
The point is that having the option integrated at practically no extra cost is what I'm talking about. Yes, I've had my share of fits with it too, but it's a lot like USB and how it eventually patched itself up in the end. Just think about how much "convenience" and how many "device options" we have today because of USB.
I wouldn't dare rely on an integrated broadcom controller for a 24/7 server. But for my personal workstations that are backed up regularly, it's good enough for now. Luckily my main PC at home hasn't seen any major issues with its RAID 0 SATA array <fingers crossed>. It's been a year and a half now...
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
I've never had any issues setting up RAID 1 arrays using integrated hardware, and I have done it on quite a few PCs and workstations. I haven't bothered with RAID 0 though, since if I am going to go through the time and expense of adding a second disk I would actually like it to be fault tolerant. And RAID 0 and 1 covers about 95% of all integrated controllers.
RAID 5 is a completely different animal. The computational power required to do the the XOR calculations without causing a significant hit to throughput is beyond the capabilities of most onboard controllers, even those that support it. They'll usually end up slowing down I/O throughput or they'll utilize CPU cycles, dragging down overall performance. Either way it's asking for trouble unless you spend the money for a high-end add-in card. In those cases I generally recommend RAID 0+1 because it will offer greater performance and fault tolerance.
RAID 5 is a completely different animal. The computational power required to do the the XOR calculations without causing a significant hit to throughput is beyond the capabilities of most onboard controllers, even those that support it. They'll usually end up slowing down I/O throughput or they'll utilize CPU cycles, dragging down overall performance. Either way it's asking for trouble unless you spend the money for a high-end add-in card. In those cases I generally recommend RAID 0+1 because it will offer greater performance and fault tolerance.
- Status
