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    SATA 150 or PATA 100 Hard Disk Drive, which is faster

    Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by red_chief, Dec 15, 2005.

  1. red_chief

    red_chief Notebook Consultant

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    red_chief, Dec 15, 2005
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  2. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    SATA (Serial ATA) has a 150Mbps transfer rate (theoretical), whereas the PATA (Parallel ATA, also known as Ultra ATA) has a maximum of 100Mbps. The difference between these drives is in the bus.

    Given a choice, I would take the Serial ATA. Serial ATA drives require less CPU usage to access, consume slightly less power, and have 48-bit address extensions.

    The reason why PATA is called Parallel ATA is because two bytes of data are transferred per clock. Serial ATA only transfers one, but runs at a higher speed to compensate. And, data is encoded 80% more efficently with a Serial ATA drive, so that is the reason for the 150Mbps transfer rate.
     
    Charles P. Jefferies, Dec 15, 2005
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  3. red_chief

    red_chief Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks ChazMan421 for your input...
    The technical terms are now less technical....
    So SATA is the better hard drive...
     
    red_chief, Dec 15, 2005
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  4. onick

    onick Notebook Consultant

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    thanks chazman421, for explaining the difference between these two.
     
    onick, Dec 17, 2005
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  5. TBird

    TBird Notebook Consultant

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    I don't know if any of you guys will care but...
    Here is a more technical version of the differences of SATA and PATA (or Ultra ATA)
    Both have the same amount of little wires in the Bus cable (don't know how many doesn't matter though i'll just guess 42 for the sake of this)
    Ok you have 42 cables on the Bus coming from the hard-drive to whereever it goes
    When some data is requested from the hard-drive the hard-drive sends it on the bus
    NOW is where the difference is:
    PATA (Ultra ATA): the hard drive sends the info. on the Bus, the info. gets sepereated into 42 different pieces and each little cable in the Bus gets it's piece and has to send it
    SATA: the hard drive gets the info and sends it to the Bus, it sends all the info. to one of the cables and leaves the other 41 for another piece of data to be sent

    I'm sorry if this is confusing or I have made any mistakes (I probably have :eek: ) please reply and say what I did wrong (but please don't rub it in my face too much :eek:)
    -TBird
     
    TBird, Dec 18, 2005
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