Serial ATA Arrives At Last

[Lucid]

It's Goodbye to ribbon cables, at least ..

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/02q3/020812/index.html

[Technoid]

It will still be a couple of months before we see anything....

But it's good to see it kick off

[Elie]

So other than the highpoint controller which I do not like at all, are there any other adapters out there? Promise maybe?

Also Serial ATA was supposed to eliminate the Master/Slave concept, and allow us to connect up to 7 or 8 drives on the chain like SCSI.
Are we still limited to 4 drives?

Cheers,
Elie

[High_Jumbllama]

Serial ATA has a point to point setup. Because of this, there is no master slave, but there was word that this could be emulatable if required. As for how many, it depends on the card. I magine what you could do with some serious striping and mirroring with this stuff! This controller only seems to have two ports though. My info may be from an earlier spec or I could be completely wrong.

[Elie]

So Serial ATA is a point to point technology, I like that!
Basically each port to a drive, not two or three.

Ok let's say is the case, that each drive, or port has to have a unique identifier of some sort to establish your primary drive from the rest, like in SCSI for example.
Primarily your boot up drive is always SCSI ID 0 or 6 depends on the SCSI card you buy.
In Parallel IDE yuou have primary and secondary IDE channels and so on, so I wonder what the new format of Serial ATA is going to be.

[Technoid]

I have heard that it will still be limited to 4 drives due to backward compability.

IE: 4 drives, on 4 dedicated cables translating into:
1:Primary Master
2:Primary Slave
3:Secondary Master
4:Secondary Slave

But I don't claim to be right in this case I'm just pessimistic

[Gurm]

So...

- It isn't any faster.
- It doesn't let you have any more drives.
- The only solution is from Highpoint, masters of sucking donkey cock.

Have I covered all the bases? Sounds like the sole advantage here is spiffy cables.

- Gurm

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by Gurm
So...

- It isn't any faster.
- It doesn't let you have any more drives.
- The only solution is from Highpoint, masters of sucking donkey cock.

Have I covered all the bases? Sounds like the sole advantage here is spiffy cables.

- Gurm

Actually you missed on thing, it's probably going to be more expensive than parallel ATA.

[Wombat]

The Promise controller is due out soon. Also, I've had plenty of master/slave IDE issues, and it would be nice to leave those behind.

[Jammrock]

- It isn't any faster.

In a single drive configuration, using current HDD technology, yes. In the future when 10k/15k HDD's are made for serial ATA, things will change. Serial ATA looks like a parallel ATA and low-end SCSI replacement. I doubt it will be a high end SCSI replacement because of device number limitation, but who knows.


- It doesn't let you have any more drives.

Currently no. When Serial ATA begins getting built into motherboards, and legacy Parallel ATA is removed, they will be able to fit in 8 drive connectors in the same amount of space as 2 Parrallel ATA connectors. We'll have to wait until legacy free boards hit, or when Adaptec or the like releases a high-end controller.

- The only solution is from Highpoint, masters of sucking donkey cock.

Currently, yes. In the near future, no. Promise, Adaptec, SIIG and others have all announced Serial ATA controllers. Intel, AMD, VIA nVidia and others have announced plans to integrate Serial ATA into the mobo chipsets. WD, Maxtor, Seagate, IBM/Hitachi and others will have Serial ATA drives out by year end.

So in it's current state, you are correct, Gurm. With the backers Serial ATA has, your statements will be incorrect shortly. Once tier 1 OEM's such as Dell, Gateway, HP and Micron (who are all signed supporters of Serial ATA) begin making legacy free boards, along with Asus, Abit, MSI, etc, Serial ATA will rather quickly take over the market. Far faster than USB and Firewire, because the HDD and controller is a much more important device than a game controller.

Jammrock

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Gurm
So...

- It isn't any faster.
- It doesn't let you have any more drives.
- The only solution is from Highpoint, masters of sucking donkey cock.

Have I covered all the bases? Sounds like the sole advantage here is spiffy cables.

- Gurm

Yeah, but its cool! Plus you forgot about:

Plug & Play
Point to Point
Less mess in your case
Its cool!
No more shithole stinky IDE cables
plus, its cool!

I for one want serial ATA because change is good(for the most part)

Dave

[SpiralDragon]

damn... and i was about to invest in 4x120GB hds and 3x80gb HDs and 1x100GB hds all with 8mb chache plus a promise tech IDE raid controler.. (for video editing if you are wondering) it seems now the best thing to do is wait it all out till late next year and see what hapens.... 200GB single drive any one?

[Gurm]

So NOW it sucks, but SOON (tm) it will be cool?

Err... yeah.

- Gurm

[BuddMan]

Serial ATA doesn't suck?

[Marshmallowman]

Its cool, it's nice a long term standard .

I think the first SATA standard should be good for about 5 years, before they need to upgrade it. (raw throughput of HDD's will have to more than triple to saturate it)

and the spiffy (longer)cables are the best bit.

5 drives in a box(4 on separate cables) is a nighmare of cabling.

I am honestly thinking of getting a SATA card and use adapters so I can use the spiffy cables on my old drives.