IDE and SATA Hard drive

[fraya713]

So i just installed a 320 gb IDE hard drive with a 200 gb SATA and plan on making a clean format to both drives. Which drive is better to put my personal files on and which is better to put Windows XP pro on. I will be playing LOTS of games on this computer.

thanks for the help guys!

 

[Widjaja]

Honestly I found no difference between ATA133, ATA150 and ATA300 speeds, reason being is standard HDDs never tranfer data fast enough to make use of the bandwidth.

I only used my IDE as storage because in theory the SATA is supposed to be faster.
But from what I see it's not.

In benchtests you will see your SATA out performing with burst rate and data transfer but you won't see a dramatic difference between the two in gaming.
If any.

 

[Kursah]

Widjaja is right, there's not too much of a difference, though I'd use the IDE drive as a storage drive, and partition the SATA drive for OS and gaming purposes, modern SATA drives are getting pretty quick, older IDE drives can't keep up, but in the "by the seat of the pants" situation, the difference will be little to nil. Unless you are a RAID fan with WD Raptors, I don't really think it'll be that big of a deal.

 

[panchoman]

i think we all missed the drives themselves.. we must take into account the drives.. how many platters and all too.. as the ide might actually turn out to be faster then sata in many cases.

however, as wid and kursah have said.. sata features more bandwidth.. which allows faster burstable speeds, but most of the time both interfaces perform near eachother. however i would use sata for os and ide for storage.

 

[Mussels]

the SATA interfaces largets benefit is the cables - its thinner, smaller, and uses less voltage (therefore less prone to interference)

The key as people have said is the DRIVES. a 320GB drive is most likely going to be faster than a 250GB drive as its from a newer generation, so IDE vs sata doesnt come into it.

Personally i always go for the smallest drive as the OS drive, that way i lose less data if windows decides to go on a rampage and eat my data one day.

 

[Widjaja]

the SATA interfaces largets benefit is the cables - its thinner, smaller, and uses less voltage (therefore less prone to interference).

This is basically it about IDE(PATA) compared SATA.

It was evolution to get away from the big old IDE ribbons and future proofing the bandwidth for when faster HDDs would be released.
Thing is there isn't any HDDs capable as of yet of fully utilizing the bandwidth.

Only storage which has very noticable effects on load times are SSD (solid state disc).
Not that I have personally seen this for myself.
Apparently Windows loads up very quick on these little drives but when it came to games the times were no different to a HDD.

Doing a Quick run through HD Tach benchmark this is what my HDDs avg data reads were.

The HDDs are both Western Digital ATA300
160GB is older tech than the 320 and has the 4-pin molex legacy connection as well as the standard SATA power connector while the 320 only has the SATA power connector.

320GB 16mb cache w/1x320 platter 7200rpm
avg read 89mb a sec
Max Burst rate 241mb sec

160GB 8mb cache w/2x160 platters 7200rpm
avg read 54mb a sec
Max Burst rate 205mb sec

Even though the benchtest states the 320GB is faster, when your'e sitting there in front of the PC waiting at the loading screen it will take the same amount of time from start to finish.