SATA 2 or 3

OK I know the 3 has a faster data transfer rate. But I am not sure what this means in real terms. I want to use a RAID 0 setup on a Clevo d9xxx box. My idea is to have two drives for the RAID and another drive for the swap area when I run Photoshop (CS3). I also play D2 and GW, but that is not all that big a load.

So will I really notice a difference between a SATA 2 and a SATA 3 drive in real life. I am not having a lot of luck getting a reseller who will build the box with SATA 3; but there are plenty of SATA 2 HDs to choose from.

What do you guys think; is the faster drive worth the extra dollars, and the extra grief in finding and installing one. I dont have a real problem getting a bare bones box, but if I can get the reseller to do it all it means more time for me to play GW and edit my photos.

 

there is no sata 3. There is sata 1 (1.5 GB/s) and sata 2 (3.0 GB/s). Anyways, No hard drive can even come close to throwing out that sort of bandwidth. There is no (that i know of) difference between them. However, im surprised you cant get sata 2 drives (what i think you mean by sata 3) because they are more readily available now days as sata 1 is being phased out.

 

Thanks for the correction. There are a few resellers who offer a limited selection of 3gb/s drives; but most (that I have been looking at anyway; like powernotebooks and xotic) 250 3gb/s; only a 200. If I get a 3 drive system that is 150 gb of storage I lose.

But if I cant get close to 3gb/s of band width the 1.5 may be a better and cheaper option. But I just dont know.

Would I notice the difference using PS.

 

I have RAID 0 Stripe on my desktop using 3 Seagate 3G drives and its fast. They key is selecting the correct cluster size for your requirements. I would get the SATA II (3GB) hard drives since they are the defacto techonlogy and if you upgrade your unit later on you would be up to par.

 

I have been researching this on other sites and some folks claim that the SATA II drives have faster thruput on a desktop than on a laptop. I have also talked to reps at resellers (who dont offer a lot of SATA II drives compared to the number of SATA I drives) and they claim I would not notice the difference between the two drives in real life use.

But as you point out the 3gb/s thruput is the standard now. I guess one thing I am still wondering about is if on a D901c I would need a mob upgrade to take advantage of the faster thruput.

 

SATA version itself doesn't measure HDD performance directly. It simply means maximum bandwidth allowed for the interface. No single HDD today come close to the 1.5Gbps bandwidth of SATA 1.0. In fact, most of them still fall under the threshold of traditional PATA interface.

However, most newer HDD come with SATA 2.0 as standard where older model HDD has SATA 1.0. Newer HDD may incorporated with newer technology such Perpendicular recording which will increase the sustained transfer rate dramastically.