dragon1's Full Review: Seagate DiamondMax® Plus 10 80 GB SATA Hard D...
What are the Harddrive Interfaces
When I started building my own pc's the fastest ata(IDE) was 33MB/s. This was about 1986/87 . Of course the actual transfer rate was about 10 to 25 % slower than the maximum at the time and still is. This includes the 66/100/133 MB/s bandwidth available today. There are disadvantages to ide cables which are
1 There is a limit to the length of the cables
2 The cables are suseptable to interference(data loss)
3 Because of the 40/80 wires in close proximity to each other can cause interferance
4 Because of the above there is probably a limit to how fast a transer rate can be achieved
S-ATA Interface
Is new technology that will replace the IDE interface. IDE has been used for almost 20years, where as cpu's and video technology last only months before something new comes out.
S-ATA uses a higher voltage than IDE and with the fact there are only 7 wires compared to the 40/80 ide cable there is less chance of interferance. There are a lot of advantages to S-ATA compared to IDE, which are
1 Faster than ULTRA/ATA at this time there are 2 versions-V1 which has a bandwidth of 150MB/s and V2 which is 300MB/s. Which I bet will go much faster as the technology is developed.
2 Because there are only 7 wires the cable is less bulky, fragile, which means there is less restriction to airflow and is easier to connect.
3 Like USB and Firewire, you can replace the harddrive without shutting down.
4 Easy setup inWindows XP
5 Lower cost for advance features
The only disadvantage if you consider it a disadvantage, is that only one harddrive can be attached to each S-ATA cable.
Now I ran HdTech benchmark on the 2 harddrives I show here
Western Digital WD1200JB
Capacity 120 GB
Interface IDE/EIDE
Enclosure Internal
Drive Dimensions 3.5" x 1/3H (Low Profile)
Spindle Speed 7,200 RPM
Technical Features
Special Features S.M.A.R.T Technology
Internal Data Transfer Rate 602 Mbit/s
External Data Transfer Rate 100 MBps
Seek Time 8.9 ms
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 4.17 ms
Interface (Detailed) DMA/ATA-100 (Ultra)
Sound Emission 39 dB
120GB ATA100
CPU Utilization 4%
7200 rpm 8meg buffer
Burst speed 94.6MB/s
Random access 13.4ms
Average Read 52.6MB/s
Capacity 80 GB
Interface Serial ATA
Enclosure Internal
Drive Dimensions 3.5" x 1/3H (Low Profile)
Spindle Speed 7200 RPM
Technical Features
Special Features S.M.A.R.T Technology
External Data Transfer Rate 150 MBps
Seek Time 9 ms
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 4.17 ms
Interface (Detailed) Serial ATA
Sound Emission 32 dB
HdTech
Random access 14.9ms
Cpu Utilizations 7%
Average Read 57.8 MB/s
Burst Speed 128.5 MB/s
Now as I said before the actual transfer rate is slower than the total bandwidth available. I did install Windows XP Pro on this drive and it did seem to load faster and once on my desktop seemed able to use it sooner. Plus it seemed a little faster than before.
Now in the last year I have assembled 4 computers. Of them only 2 had S-ATA connections on the motherboard. Those two I reviewed here
Now the first one has 2 S-ATA connections and the other has 4 connections. The one I checked the harddrive on is the first one above. I hope to eventually add more but it may take me a while.
Now I want to add this.
Now for you non-technical people that read my reviews-I'm trying to do a reviews that you can understand. There will be some things I will put in for more technacally inclined. But if there is anything you do not understand or you have a question. Leave it in comments and I will try real hard to explain or answer. If I have done it, how about telling me that also.
Seagate Maxtor creates a new standard with the introduction of the DiamondMax 10 drive. Its high capacity, enhanced reliability and great performance ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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