Difference between ATA 133 and SATA hard drive
 

I'd like to add a hard drive to my Dell desktop and was curious as to the differences in technology? Worth the effort cost of going with one or the other. I may also opt to go external via a USB 2.0 port.

Comments appreciated.

SATA is Serial ATA. Its is faster, and worth implementing if your computer already has SATA controllers built into the mother board. SATA drives should not be significantly more expensive than an ATA 133 drive.

ATA 133 has a maximum burst speed of 133MBps, where as SATA can sustain 150MBps.

External drives are nice because they are portable. I have an external enclosure that fits a 2.5" hard drive(a laptop hard drive). This is nice because it does not require an external power source, it runs off the USB bus power supply.

Speed and cost. Remember also that on the standard ide interface the 2 devices will go as fast as the slowest one. Also, drive spin speed (rpm) will have an effect on performance.

From 3 linux boxes...

Dell w/ p4 and SATA drive:
hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 2924 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1461.49 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 142 MB in 3.02 seconds = 46.96 MB/sec

Dell w/ P3-500 and ATA100 and 5400 rpm drive:
/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.04 seconds =123.08 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.32 seconds = 27.59 MB/sec

iMac-DVD running Debian and a 7200 rpm drive (ATA100)
Timing cached reads: 404 MB in 2.01 seconds = 201.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 40 MB in 3.09 seconds = 12.94 MB/se

Watch out for addressable size limitiations. I think you need 64 bit machine to get over ~150MB ??

and don't forget about SATA-II.. twice the fun.

SATA's are definitely more expensive... lower demand = higher prices.

Thanks for the info guys!

I'm doing the S ATA. 320 Gig @ $114. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/233519-paycheck-awsome-deal-hard-drive-dvd-burner-not-spam.html