New Hardrive.... SCSI? ATA? ETC? WTF?

[JoseMCeee 10+ year member]

Im looking to buy a new hardrive for my pc but Im really confused with all these new kinds of harddrives. Im not really sure what kind my current one is but Im prettt sure its 40 pin for the connection. Now there are several types that I know of.

IDE Ultra ATA100

IDE Ultra ATA133

SATA 3.0gb/s

Serial ATA150

Then theres the other ones that say

SCSI Ultra 320 68 pin

SCSI Ultra 320 80 pin

But im pretty sure those wont work because they say they use more pins. It probably wont fit my mobo. So does anyone know from the top list what to get? The difference?

Click to read more...

 

[JoseMCeee 10+ year member]

does anyone know?

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

Depends on what controller your system has. You don't have SCSI (you'd know if you did).

Listed in order of speed (top being fastest) generically

SATA 3.0gb/s

Serial ATA150

IDE Ultra ATA133

IDE Ultra ATA100

 

[vosschs 5,000+ posts]

you dont want scsi unless you run a server, what kind of motherboard do you have

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

you dont want scsi unless you run a server, what kind of motherboard do you have

My main home system is running a pair of 15k RPM, U/320 SCSI drives in RAID0 on an Adaptec U/320 hardware caching RAID controller.

Other than RAM drives, I think that's about as fast as you can get. It holy smokes any other drive config I've run, and it's been in there for over 2 years -- maybe 3. In that many years nothing else has been able to out-do it. SCSI pwnz all. But, it's expensive as hell! And it's noisier and hotter than IDE drives.

 

[vosschs 5,000+ posts]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Yep. Seriously!

My OS disk array cost more than my wife's entire new computer system. And I only have 70GB of space on it *hehehe*

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

Yep. Seriously!
My OS disk array cost more than my wife's entire new computer system. And I only have 70GB of space on it *hehehe*

but anyone who knows what your talking about is jealous......

 

[wilzyx 5,000+ posts]

if you dont know what kind of harddrives your computer has, im guessing ata 100/133. that was the standard for a while and unless you just recently bought a computer i dont think it can support SATA.

 

[JoseMCeee 10+ year member]

well yea now that I looked at a couple of sites at work I figured my drive is probably ata 100 or 133. So Serial ATA150 is actually just SATA 150? And this would need an adapter for it correct? But since it will be through the PCI card will it even let the speed get as fast as it could with a fully enabled SATA mobo?

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

Yes, it's SATA150. The drive won't push 150 though, so it really doesn't matter all that much for transfer rate. A good drive will have very fast access time like the newish Western Digital SE 16-400, and Hitachi DeskStar T7k250, SATA drives. Very nice.

But, if your moboard doesn't have a SATA controller onboard, it's not really worth spending the extra money on a PCI controller. Just stick with its Parallel ATA and get the ATA version of a fast SATA drive and you'll be all set.

 

[JoseMCeee 10+ year member]

^^could you refer to me to a drive of such power that you are describing?//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Also I thought I might as well get a drive that has at least 250 maybe even 300.

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=11/form_keyword=hitachi%20deskstar/rd=1/skd=1/popup3[]=20:144

and

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php?form_keyword=western+digital+caviar+se&topcat_id=&page_id=11&popup3%5B%5D=20%3A144&lo_p=0&hi_p=0

Of those 2 selections, I'd personally go for the Hitachi. When you get up into Serial ATA performance, the WD will outperform it slightly though. I have the Hitachi 250 (SATA2 version) as a storage drive and it is freakishly fast. The access time performance is similar to that of a very fast SCSI drive. Transfer rate is good too, but most performance drives have very similar transfer rates.

 

[JoseMCeee 10+ year member]

and these 2 drives are ATA 133?

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

To be fair, I should add that Seagate makes drives that are nearly as fast and they have a very reliable track record, run cooler than most, and are probably the quietest in the bunch. You wouldn't go wrong with a Seagate drive either. I'm not a big fan of Maxtor, mainly due to reliability, but they have come a long way over the years.