ATA 100 or ATA 133?

[zen]

Putting together 3 new systems at work and I cant decide which would be better. An ATA 100 Western Digital 80GB JB with the 8MB cache or an 80GB ATA 133 HDD. Which do ya think would be faster?

[J-Excel]

I believe WD said ATA133 was just a gimmick to get people to buy new drives. There is no discernable advantage to go from ATA100 to ATA133. IMO WDs are the best built drives. If you need a speedy drive for a server I'd go with SCSI, otherwise if it were me I'd get the WD. Btw, Serial ATA is just around the corner.

[zen]

Theboard Im going with has a serial ata controller. Toms Hardware says not to rush to get them though, serial drives that is. Although I think the author was refering to a PCI Serial controller running the drive and not a internal controller which this board has.

[sechs]

Actually, there's barely an advantage to ATA/100 over ATA/66. As long as the burst transfer rate for the drive is less than the bandwidth available to it, then you're fine.

That said, that 8MB cache is also a gimick. There isn't a major advantage to having such a large cache to your average home user (or even your above-average home user).

Look at the performance characteristics of the drive and the prices and decide from there.

[Peter M]

Originally posted by zen
Theboard Im going with has a serial ata controller. Toms Hardware says not to rush to get them though, serial drives that is. Although I think the author was refering to a PCI Serial controller running the drive and not a internal controller which this board has.

... which this board does NOT have. There's a Silicon Image 3112 on it, and that's a PCI SATA chip.

[F/A-18 MechDood]

I don't remember the link, but the WD 8mb cached ATA100 drives outperformed the Maxtor 2mb cached ATA133 drives.

The 8mb cache a gimmick? I'll take my 8mb cached drive anyday over anything else.

[zen]

Originally posted by Peter M


... which this board does NOT have. There's a Silicon Image 3112 on it, and that's a PCI SATA chip.

I stand corrected, darnit.

[sechs]

Originally posted by F/A-18 MechDood
I don't remember the link, but the WD 8mb cached ATA100 drives outperformed the Maxtor 2mb cached ATA133 drives.

The 8mb cache a gimmick? I'll take my 8mb cached drive anyday over anything else.

That's because they have a higher areal density, not particularly because of the larger cache.

For anyone with a reasonable operating system, the disk cache run by the OS is better and more flexible than the measly few megabytes offered by the drive itself.

[FalcomPSX]

Originally posted by sechs
That said, that 8MB cache is also a gimick. There isn't a major advantage to having such a large cache to your average home user (or even your above-average home user).

Look at the performance characteristics of the drive and the prices and decide from there.

wrong, the 8MB drive has a MAJOR advantage. two additional years of warranty coverage.

[sechs]

I didn't say that it wasn't a better drive. I just said that it wasn't the cache that was the key contributor to performance.

If you want to be hardheaded about it, then go ahead; that's not going to change the facts.