Outpace The Competition With SATA Hard Drives

For system builders, this situation presents a great opportunity to distinguish themselves from Tier One system vendors. While they are still pushing systems with essentially obsolete disk technology, system builders can build PCs with state-of-the-art storage for a very small price differential.

In this recipe, I will provide an overview and comparison of IDE and SATA hard-drive technology and prove that SATA drives can provide system builders a significant competitive edge over the Tier One vendors. I will also outline SATA hardware costs and give you some tips for installing SATA drives.

What is SATA and IDE (ATA)?

IDE (ATA) hard-drive technology is based on parallel data processing, which means that information traveling from the drive to the data bus is sent in bulk in a random fashion. The data comes off the hard drive in random time intervals, hits the data bus, and then heads off to its final destination. IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics, by the way, and the IDE interface is officially known as the ATA (AT Attachment) specification.

This technology has been the industry standard of PC hard drives since about 1990, when it replaced the old MFM and ESDI drives. This was back in the day when the average hard drive only provided about 200 MB of storage. In 1990, a mere 14 years ago, the first 1 GB hard drives became available. They weighed about 10 pounds, cost about $2,000 retail, and made great doorstops when they finally died. IDE was all the rage back then, because it provided hard-drive technology at a low cost, small footprint, and decent speed.

The counterpart to IDE during that time was SCSI (small computer system interface). SCSI is a bit faster than IDE, but much more expensive. It also requires the purchase of an expensive SCSI adapter. As a result, IDE hard-drive technology has dominated the PC hard-drive industry since then, and it has yet to be displaced. In fact, according to conversations I've had with hard-drive manufacturers and system integrators, the large PC manufacturers will not be abandoning IDE drives for at least two to three years -- if ever.

IDE hard drives use very wide ribbon cables, which tend to clog up the inside of a PC. One of the biggest frustrations I've found over the years has come from trying (in vain) to get the ribbon cables of an IDE hard drive and CD-ROM to sit nicely inside a PC case. The connectors on IDE hard drives can also be a pain. On occasion, the drive sits in a cramped spot, and it's almost impossible to get my fingers to the spot where the cable needs to attach to the drive.

SATA hard-drive technology is based on serial data processing, which means that information traveling from the drive to the data bus is clocked and sent in an orderly fashion. The data leaves the hard drive in timed intervals, hits the data bus, and then heads off to its final destination.

SATA hard drives use thin ribbon cables which are a pleasure to work with. The slender cables have "clip on" connectors, which are simple to work with, even in the most cramped corners of the PC case.

SATA drives transmit data at an average speed of 150 Mbit/sec., but there are many articles online that discuss 3.0 Gbit/sec. SATA technology, which is due out in 2005. (There is a good article about this faster drive technology on the Serial ATA Working Group site.) Compared that with the 133 Mbit/sec. data-transmission rate provided by IDE drives, and you can begin to see why the industry needs to switch to SATA technology.

The photo below shows the IDE connector embedded in a PC. Looks easy enough.

Next, here's the SATA connector embedded in PC. It looks a bit more modular than its IDE counterpart.

The next photo compares IDE and SATA cables. That big fat IDE cable on the left will clog up the inside of your case.

Next, here's a shot of an installed IDE cable. One is okay, but if you need two or three, you're snagged and snarled.

By comparison, here's a look at an installed SATA cable. Nice and thin, and easy to use.

Comparison and Analysis

At the beginning of this recipe, I said I've uncovered significant under-performance in IDE technology, given the prices that retail stores charge for new PCs. In this section, I'll prove it. First, I will describe a "head to head" performance comparison between three systems, one older PC newly configured with a SATA drive, and two new PCs, both with new IDE drives.

The Old PC is my trusty, four-year-old Compaq Presario 5WV254. This system contains an AMD Duron 700 MHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM, and the OS is Windows XP Professional. For this recipe, I upgraded the system with a Maxtor 6Y120 SATA hard drive.

New PC #1 is a Compaq Presario Pentium 4 system. It boasts a 3.0 GHZ Pentium 4 CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and Windows XP Professional. Storage is provided by a 7200-RPM IDE hard drive.

New PC #2 is Compaq Presario SR1100NX. It boasts a 2.53 GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 256 MB of RAM, and Windows XP Professional. The hard drive is a 5400-RPM Seagate Barracuda ST340015A.

You might be forgiven if you expected the new PC to run much faster than my old one. After all, it has a much faster CPU, right? Well, let's take a look.

Test 1

The first test I ran was a generic file transfer. To keep everything "apples to apples," I took the system folder of Windows XP called c: > windows > system32. On any given system running Windows XP, this folder will contain about 330 MB contained in approximately 2,000 files. I created a new folder on the c: drive, then opened a DOS window to issue the manual command copy > c: > windows system32 > *.* which any old-timer knows will copy all the files from the windows > system32 folder to the new folder. Here are the surprising -- and astounding -- results.

Test 2

Next, I performed what I refer to as my "time to boot" test. This test measures the time it takes to boot Windows XP from the opening banner to the initial display of the desktop.

Note: Due to the "bold assertions" of this recipe (test 2 in particular), it is incumbent upon me to make the following disclaimer: Given that there are different hard-drive manufacturers offering different performance levels, the performance differential I uncovered may be different from the differential given two other hard drives or two other PCs. Furthermore, there are new hard-drive controllers (for example, the Intel 925) that may shrink the performance differential between PCs with IDE and SATA hard drives.

A big help -- or hindrance -- to the CPU and USB interface

So why do PC vendors continue to offer IDE drives? Intel and AMD make constant improvements to their CPU products. The new Pentium 4 series offers new applications in multimedia, video, audio and distributed processing. USB II offers a new world of peripheral connectivity, from DVD to full stereo sound. It seems almost illogical to me that with all this horsepower available, the big PC makers would install what I consider sub-par hard drives. While the hard drive is certainly not a PC's "center of the universe," it bears three significant responsibilities:

• Sole support of the OS (which gets installed on the hard drive).
• File transfer and file processing.
• Swap file and paging.

Costs

A nice surprise with SATA drives is the price tag. The SATA add-on controller board retails for about $50, but if a box-builder chooses to use a motherboard with an onboard SATA controller, the associated cost drops to nil.

Have a look at these price examples on Tiger Direct. First, Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA drive sells for $109.99. The drive offers 7200 RPM, an 8 MB buffer, and a capacity of up to 120 GB.

Now let's look take a look at the 5400-RPM Seagate Barracuda ST340015A, currently available in new Compaq towers, that we used in New PC #2. This drive costs $40 less, but provides only 30% performance of a SATA drive. NOT a good investment, in my humble opinion. You can view the prices here.

Installation Tips for SATA Hard drives

To install a SATA drive in a PC, you will need five key components:

• SATA hard drive.
• SATA controller.
• SATA drive cable.
• Installation CD-ROM that ships with the SATA controller.
• Blank diskette (for drivers).

SATA hard-drive installation is similar to that of IDE or SCSI drives. However, once you get your hands on a SATA cable and see how easy it is to thread inside a PC case, you will never go back to the annoying IDE ribbon cables.

The only major differences in installation occur during the installation of Windows (any version after Windows 95). At some point during the OS install, you will be prompted for a Windows driver diskette. This will happen because the Windows CD-ROM will not recognize the SATA hard drive. (Microsoft has not gotten around to including those drivers yet). It's a simple matter of creating a driver diskette from the SATA controller board CD-ROM or website download page.

Closing Thoughts

A PC is a hodgepodge of equipment, installed in a box, which provides users with a common interface. It's nearly impossible to identify exactly which component of the PC dictates its overall performance. But the goal of this recipe has been to challenge old notions and offer up some new theories. I believe that I have put forth evidence in this recipe that directly challenges the idea that the hard drive is insignificant, and not to be considered as it relates to PC performance. Furthermore, I have tried to prove that the hard drive is equally significant and ancillary component to CPU performance. I also believe that I have exploited a new product niche for box-builders: super-fast, affordable PCs with SATA drives, currently unavailable on the shelves of BestBuy or CompUSA.

DAVID KARY is the founder and CEO of rippt.com and a frequent contributor to TechBuilder.org.

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