Parallel ATA & Serial ATA Hard Drives

[Dark Auro]

Well, I'm thinking of getting a new hard drive for my computer and I was searching Fry's Electronics website and noticed they had Parallel and Serial ATA hard drives. I created this thread to ask, what's the difference between the two. Does one have an advantage over the other? Are there more benefits in getting Parallel or Serial? Hope you guys can answer this. Thanks.

 

[gh0st]

Well, I'm thinking of getting a new hard drive for my computer and I was searching Fry's Electronics website and noticed they had Parallel and Serial ATA hard drives. I created this thread to ask, what's the difference between the two. Does one have an advantage over the other? Are there more benefits in getting Parallel or Serial? Hope you guys can answer this. Thanks.

if memory serves me PATA is a standard ide cable. 100/133 mb/s. SATA is 150mb /s. If you can id go with SATA.

 

[blahblahblah]

Parallel ATA
- Designed for speeds up to 100 MB/sec
- Been jury rigged for speeds up to 133 MB/sec
- Fat cables which limit airflow
- Cable length limited to 18 inches
- Have to worry about jumper settings

Serial ATA
- Currently at 150 MB/sec
- Is able to go up to 600 MB/sec which allows for future speed increases
- Native RAID support
- Skinny cables which help increase airflow
- Allows for longer cables (up to 1 meter in length)
- No jumpers

Right now, harddrives don't use all of the bandwith provided by the Parallel ATA format. In fact, most harddrive have a peak around 45 MB/sec. So you will not notice a difference between a parallel ATA harddrive and an identical SATA harddrive. However, SATA is the new standard which has a lot of advantages to it. I would recommend a SATA harddrive to anybody who is getting a new computer.

 

[SubKamran]

I bought my friend a SATA drive (80GB), there IS a difference in speed. His windows xp starts up faster than mine, but only by bit. Right now, SATA isn't so much better UNLESS you buy the Western Digital Raptor series and then you can claim there's a mega-difference

 

[FictiousWill]

My sata raid flies. Sata all the way. Plus you've got to love the pretty little red cables.

 

[Subatomic]

Well...... now you are getting into the RPMs... alot different than SATA and PATA.
standard drives are 7200RPM, and you can get this in either Serial or Parallel.
The new 10,000RPM drives (raptor) will load up programs as fast as it will drain your wallet, and are only available in SATA, damn those things are fast... my friend loaded up a far cry map in a record time...

 

[Jmechy]

I bought a 250 gig SATA drive yesterday at Fry's. 7200 RPM, 8 MB buffer, $130 after $30 rebate. Runs great, although its not THAT much faster then my old PATA drives.

 

[Dark Auro]

I bought a 250 gig SATA drive yesterday at Fry's. 7200 RPM, 8 MB buffer, $130 after $30 rebate. Runs great, although its not THAT much faster then my old PATA drives.

I ordered one just like that from Fry's website yesterday. Is it a western digital? Check your PMs by the way.

 

[Jmechy]

WD2500JDRTL.

http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=59

its a Caviar. yay.