SATA Controller + SATA Drive

Hi,

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM). My
PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's worth
buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be waster
in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

Thanks,

Nick

nick_nw wrote:
Hi,

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM). My
PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's worth
buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be waster
in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

Thanks,

Nick

I haven't seen any claims that SATA 1 drives are noticably faster than
UDMA drives, and that is also our experience. I think it would be an
additional $70 (5\$50 for a SATA card and $20 premium on the drive) for
no purpose.

Daniel Feenberg

nick_nw wrote:

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM).
My PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's
worth buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be
waster in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

Yes, it wont achieve anything with the current system.

It does give you more future tho, you can more easily move that
new drive to a new system in the future if you go the SATA route.

Many new systems only have a single ATA port, two drives,
and one will normally be used by the DVD burner.

wrote
nick_nw wrote

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM).
My PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's
worth buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be
waster in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

I haven't seen any claims that SATA 1 drives are noticably faster than
UDMA drives, and that is also our experience. I think it would be an
additional $70 (5\$50 for a SATA card and $20 premium on the drive)

You dont have to pay anything like that.

for no purpose.

The main advantage is that you can use it as the main drive in a new system.

Previously nick_nw wrote:
Hi,

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM). My
PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's worth
buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be waster
in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

For a single-drive system, there will not be a speed improvement.
If you would otherwise put two IDE drives on one channel, you
may see some improvement, but only because each SATA interface
has its own channel.

Arno

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
Previously nick_nw wrote:
Hi,

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM). My
PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's worth
buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be waster
in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

For a single-drive system, there will not be a speed improvement.

If you would otherwise put two IDE drives on one channel,

Which is perfectly fine when using one at a time.
Even two, as long as they are not both reading.

you may see some improvement, but only because

each SATA interface has its own channel.

Not necessarily.
What matters if it has it's own logically independent controller chips.
It may just be a legacy IDE controller with bridge chips and have
the same restrictions as a regular ATA controller/hostbus adapter.


Arno

nick_nw wrote:
Hi,

I'm finally about to upgrade my rather slow WD 40GB HD (5200 RPM). My
PC will take an ATA (UDMA/100) drive, my question is whether it's worth
buying a PCI SATA controller and a SATA drive, or will that be waster
in my ageing 2700d Celeron based system?

Thanks,

Nick

Thanks for all the replies. I'm just going to go with a new ATA. I
don't need to worry about the 'future' too much as this is just a stop
gap until a new PC next year (at which point current system goes to
daughter).

Best

Nick