[mlwjackson]

Well, my system posted fine and I reached the point of loading the OS. I have a friend that has worked in IT for the government for years. He recommended that I consider loading the OS on a separate drive becasue it is usually the OS that gradually gets corrupted, buggy and causes problems. CompUSA had an SAMSUNG 80GB 7200rpm ATA drive for only $9.99 after rebates. So I grabbed one thinking that I would use it to load XP and use the WD Caviar SATA II SE 250 GB 16mb cache for everything else. But then I got to wondering...is the ATA so much slower in its data transfer that I will regret using it? At $9.99 it was a bargin for a name brand manufacturer.

Should I go ahead and use the ATA or would I be better off with another small SATA for the OS?


The system configuration is MSI K8N Neo4 platinum, X2 +4200, 2GB Corsair XMS Cl2 RAM.

[Advertisements]

depends on what type of ATA the drive is ATA66/100/133

sata drives can only transfer at a maximum of 150mb/s

so really the difference isnt that much between ata 133 and sata 150!

or as another alternative you could just partition your sata II drive leave 50 gig fro the os and 200 for everything else and use the ata drive for back up purposes
but the choice is yours,
troppo

Edited by troppo, 26 March 2006 - 11:14 PM.

[troppo]

depends on what type of ATA the drive is ATA66/100/133

sata drives can only transfer at a maximum of 150mb/s

so really the difference isnt that much between ata 133 and sata 150!

or as another alternative you could just partition your sata II drive leave 50 gig fro the os and 200 for everything else and use the ata drive for back up purposes
but the choice is yours,
troppo

Edited by troppo, 26 March 2006 - 11:14 PM.

[SRX660]

Sata II drives are quite a bit faster than ATA133 drives. Sata II are 300Mb/s compared to the 133Mb/s of ATA133.
You will notice the difference.

Personally i partition a drive for the OS with 2 partitions. One partition of 20 to 30 Gigs for the OS and programs, and the rest of the drive for data. This way if the OS corrupts you can reinstall without touching your data. The down side to this is if the HD goes bad you can lose everything. After some problems with some Deskstar drives i always do monthly backups to DVD's. Since i always did do backups to cd's i have never lost much data in years.

SRX660

[troppo]

yes SATA II drives are faster 300mb/s but
this is therotical drives can not actually produce a transfer rate of 300mb/s
the limiting factor is the physical construction of the drives they still only spin at 7200 RPM
thats what i have been told i have been looking at them for a while and the avergae trasnfer rate of a ATA 133 drive is around 89 Mb/s so it shows that even ATA drives cant produce there 133

yes the drives can produce 300mb/s but only for a short time i have been told that they cant actually sustain 300mb/s

look thast what i have been told so i could be totally wrong

but SRX660 he asked wheather he should buy another small SATA drive for the OS not another SATA II,

would I be better off with another small SATA for the OS

troppo

Edited by troppo, 27 March 2006 - 11:07 PM.

[mlwjackson]

Actually, SRX660 did a better job of understanding what I was saying than I did communicating it. I did infact mean another small SATA II drive, not a SATA. So, it appears that, while a SATA II drive will seldom match the supposed 300 mb/s for more than a very brief period of time, it will none the less consistently run measurably faster than an ATA.

[troppo]

well yes but it will not stay at a constant 300mb/s
it will reach that but will not stay constatant,
troppo