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SATA vs IDE drives?

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by mister0, Dec 7, 2007.

  1. mister0

    mister0 Member

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    hey there, so I'm building myself a new pc after christmas, and was wondering if it's really worth replacing the dvd drives i have (which are IDE) with SATA drives. the motherboard i'm looking at has an IDE connector, so I can use them. Has anyone upgraded? noticed any really big differences?

    cheers!
     
  2. Waymon3X6

    Waymon3X6 Regular member

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    SATA is the newer technology and is faster, so I would get the sata drive. The old IDE ribbon styled cables are bigger and kill the airflow inside your case. The SATA cables are smaller and thinner, so airflow is improved.
     
  3. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Just bear in mind that, for reasons unknown, S-ATA optical drives produce more noise than IDE drives.
     
  4. GTR35

    GTR35 Active member

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    yes thats tru...but do you prefer a slower but quieter drive or faster but little noise drive...i'll take the second option...thnx
     
  5. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    But for the fact that S-ATA drives aren't actually any faster than IDE drives, I'd agree with that point. Just because the interface is faster doesn't make any difference to the speed of the drive. A 20x DVD drive will read/write data at no more than 27MB/s. Consider that IDE can take up to 100MB/s, why would you bother with S-ATA for speed? The advantage I can think of is to not have that huge great cable in the way of everything, but other than that, I see no reason to worry about S-ATA Optical drives.
     
  6. REAM

    REAM Guest

    the only reason to go for Sata over IDE is to improve airflow, it looks less ugly, and if you have no more IDE slots. the newer mobos in a few years wont even do IDE, so why not upgrade.

    IDE driver run as fast as SATA, because no drives run anywhere near the max speed that the cables can provide.
     
  7. GTR35

    GTR35 Active member

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    i gotta agree with that one...some people, including me, think that SATA is faster...because the spec for it say so and the cable is much smaller than IDE cable...so i think its faster...but seriously you can't really see the difference tho...
     
  8. paiger651

    paiger651 Regular member

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    The smaller cable is the only advantage to SATA and the reason i have swaped over to SATA burners.
     
  9. GTR35

    GTR35 Active member

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    but sata is getting more popular now...and ide is fading away slowly...i wonder what thechnology would they have in another 10 years...
     
  10. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    For optical disc drives? Not sure, but Optical discs are now the slowest commonly used data store in PCs, so some form of technological update must soon be due. Hard drives can manage up to around 75MB/s in mainstream, RAM and CPU cache are several GB/s, yet even the fastest of DVD drives can't reach 30MB/s.
     
  11. mister0

    mister0 Member

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    thanks guys. i'm not to worried about how ugly they are - my case doesn't have any windows, but i hear what you're saying about the IDE ribbons impeding airflow. i think probably i'll get it up and running with the drives i have, and then switch them out sometime in the near future.
     
  12. REAM

    REAM Guest

    dont forget you can over come the ide problem by buying rounded IDE cables
     
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Not exactly. In a tight space, the huge connectors still take up a reasonable amount of room. I still much prefer S-ATA connectors.
     
  14. paiger651

    paiger651 Regular member

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    I agree sata makes for a much cleaner case even if rounded ide cables are used ive had both.

    Also another advantage to sata is you dont have to worry about sliping out of DMA into PIO mode.
     
  15. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well, that only happens when your PC gets infected with Starforce, and I believe that will still destroy S-ATA drives. It may not have the PIO speed impact though.
     
  16. paiger651

    paiger651 Regular member

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    I never had a drive destroyed?But have have had them slip in to PIO mode after to many errors just reset to DMA and there fine.With SATA that is a thing of the past.
     
  17. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    If your PC is actually infected with starforce's viral software, changing back to DMA isn't possible. This is usually when the drive gets destroyed.
     
  18. paiger651

    paiger651 Regular member

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    OK,i think were not really talking about the same thing.The most common reason for a DVD port to fall back to PIO mode is a drive trying over and over to read a scratched or dirty DVD for this you uninstall and reinstall the device in Device Manager.
     
  19. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well, same thing really. Starforce forces the drive to run so poorly it picks up millions of errors and is put in PIO mode.
     
  20. paiger651

    paiger651 Regular member

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    You said Starforce will destroy the drive and changing back to DMA isn't possible.That is not the case with it falling in to PIO mode from read errors are i would have a pile of destroyed burners by now.
     

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