Serail ATA

[josh]

I have been reading about alot of high end computers and alot of them sya that they have "dual 250 GB hard drives in a Serial ATA configuration" but I don't have a clue what Serial ATA means or how to set it up myself cause it sounds good.

thanx

[rizzix]

hmm somthing to do with RAID? (if thats the case then dont bother ur most likely never going to use RAID storage) well anywyz thats all i can collect looking at the -so-so "relavent" google adds below

[josh]

I was just reading an advertismetn for an Alienware Area 51 that siad it had a 85 GB Serial ATA harddrive

[Tony]

hah, google ads are awesome! do the research right there

Serial ATA seems to be just a new mean of connecting the harddrive to the system. Think of it as a USB or a firewire port... just internal and exclusive to HDD... that's my educated guess on the question.

[Genesis]

Ya, tony's right. SATA is just the newest way of connecting your HD to your system. Serial ATA cables replace the traditional IDE cables (also known as parallel ATA cables.) SATA cables are faster, alot thinner, much longer, and way more flexible than IDE cable. They allow better air flow in your case, and come with connectors that are way smaller than IDE connectors, saving space on the motherboard.

So, to answer your question, you can't really "set it up yourself" unless you go out and buy a SATA hard drive. I have a SATA hard drive, they're pretty awesome.

[josh]

thanx for the info.

Plus 20 bits

I said set it up because from most of the adds I read untill today they always siad a "dual" SATA hard drive so I assumed that it was some way of connecting the two together to get better preformance. I asked cause Iplan on buying a second HD soon so I wanted to know if I should get a SATA 1.

Now here is another question:

Do you need special ports on the mother board for a SATA HD or do you just use the normal pins that the IDE uses???

[Genesis]

Thanks for the bits.

And yes, you do need to have a motherboard that supports it. All new ones do, if you bought you're computer in the last year or so, check to see if yours does. I'd reccomend getting one if you can, as SATA is probably going to make IDE obsolete in the near future.

[Tony]

I'm preaty sure that one of the ads linked to a page that had a PCI card with two ATA ports on it. Though before rushing out and buying one, you should look into any speed lose over the PCI and deside if its worth it.

[Dan]

I have a card like that, it is how i can put 7~8 hdd in one comp

[josh]

Thanx for the help guys, I will definantly look into that.

I bought my PC last september, but since it is an HP (525c) I doubt it will have the ports.

[wtd]

Serial ATA replaces parallel ATA. It's a more efficient design that sends information in a serial manner, rather than a parallel one. Instead of sending all 8 bits of a byte at the same time, you send 1 bit of each byte at a time, basically. If the signal gets screwed up you only have to repeat one bit, rather than the whole byte.

Primary advantages of Serial ATA:

• Higher bandwidth. Parallel ATA tops out at 133Mb/s, while Serial ATA starts at 150Mb/s.
  
• The cables are much thinner. Makes a case much less crowded, and easier to manage. Use SATA drives and finally get rid of the floppy drive and ribbon cables are pretty much a thing of the past.