Thanks Bob,

   I think SATA is the way to go, given that PATA drives are getting 
rarer and if the currect SATA speed is near enough to that of PATA, then 
there's no issue. I believe SATA 1 is supposed to be 150Gb/s transfer - 
or is that SATA II ?  As you say PCI cards for SATA II do not seem to be 
very common. I think you got a bargain on the Card you got there, they 
seem to be around $50 RRP. I'll head off to the North Rocks computer 
market here in Sydney tomorrow to see what I can find. I've also seen 
external SATA connect cases, again around $50 RRP - so with an 80GB HDD, 
I think I'm looking at $150 - $180 total for everthing, perhaps a bit 
cheaper.

Cheers/2

Ed.




Robert Traynor (BobT) wrote:
> Hi Ed,
> 
> As far as I am aware, SATA is only slightly faster than PATA drive of the 
> same speed and caching.  I practical terms you may only save a few 
> minutes by going to the slight extra expense of SATA vs PATA.
> 
> SATA-2 drives are supposed to be a lot faster but not as readily available
> yet and I have not seen any SATA-2 addon cards yet. (I stand to be 
> corrected.)
> 
> I have a P4 with an external SATA connection.  Timing the copying of
> data between my internal PATA 300gb drives and an equivalent rpm
> SATA drive connected to the external port, it was so close as to be 
> hard to pick the difference.
> 
> Unfortunately, I had to give back the SATA drive to the guy I borrowed 
> it from and cannot do a more complete and proper test (yet).
> I also do not know wether the extra SATA cable internally linking the
> motherboard SATA port to the ext SATA card port had any bearing on 
> these results.  It is possibly that the total length of the TWO SATA 
> cables (one inside and one outside) may have exceeded a critical
> distance for the combined lengths.  I don't know how to test for that.
> 
> I can say that it did work reliably, even if at the same apparent speed as 
> the internal PATA drives.
> 
> Oh, my external SATA card cost $1.00 at a Computer company, closing 
> down sale a few months ago, can't remember the brand details, sorry.  
> It has one external SATA connector and one standard IDE POWER DC 
> connector like the one on a IDE hard drive or DVD drive etc.
> 
> HTH.
> As always YMMV,
> Robert Traynor (BobT).
> 26 November 2005   15:20
> 
> 
> On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 14:18:02 +1100, Ed Durrant wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>    What are the comparitive speeds of a 7200RPM drive (say 100GB 
>> capacity) using these three interfaces - I realise USB 2.0 will be the 
>> slowest, but is SATA slower than PATA (ATA 100 EIDE) ??
>>
>>    I need to take an image backup of over 45GB of data so I'm looking to 
>> see which will be the fastest. I'll be adding an adapter card into the 
>> system as it's a SCSI box (the cdrom interface is not accessible), so 
>> the question is should I get an EIDE ATA PCI interface card, a USB 2.0 
>> PCI card (I already have an external USB 2.0 cased drive), or a SATA PCI 
>> card (ideally with an external socket) ?
>>
>>    Transfer speed is the question here. The USB 2.0 and perhaps the SATA 
>> interface to an external drive, will be most convienient however if PATA 
>> is still the fastest, I'll run the system with the lid off if I need to.
>>
>> Cheers/2
>>
>> Ed.


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/u8TY5A/tzNLAA/yQLSAA/9rHolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

 To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/os2hardware/

 To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    os2hardware-unsubscribe{at}yahoogroups.com

 Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 




---