What is the diference between SATA and IDE hardisk?

Answer 1

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SATA stands for serial ATA, which is a fairly new interface found on newer motherboards.

Plain old ATA, sometimes called parallel ATA, is another term for the older IDE interface, which has been around for many years.

What you need to keep in mind is that you can only use the type of hard drive which matches your motherboard. If your system has a regular IDE connecter, you need a regular ATA drive. If you machine has the SATA connector, you need a SATA drive.

The newer interface supports faster throughput, easier recognition of multiple drives and greater reliability, but none of that is really important from the average end-user's standpoint.

IDE and ATA are essentially different abbreviations for the same thing.

Answer 2

IDE is the legacy drive connector. It is typically 40-pin ribbon cable, and does not allow more than two devices per channel. These devices (HDDs, Optical Drives, etc.) are arranged so that one is the "master" device, and one is the "slave" devices. Transfers between master and slave devices on the same channel at the same time are severely handicapped. IDE speed is meaured in terms of ATA33, ATA66, ATA100, and ATA133. 133MB/s being the maximum transfer rate. IDE ATA drives use standard 4-pin molex power connectors.

SATA is the so called "new standard" trying to replace IDE ATA devices. SATA uses a much smaller connector and cable. It is not plagued by any type of master/slave relationship between devices. SATA right now only comes in one speed, which is SATA 150. The maximum transfer rate then is 150MB/s. SATA drives use a proprietary power connector.

It may "appear" as if SATA is faster than IDE ATA looking at specs, seeing as ATA caps out at 133MB/s as opposed to SATA's 150MB/s. These numbers are, for the most part, irrelevant unless working in RAID arrays. Even the fastest HDDs on the market today struggle to reach transfer speeds of 75MB/s. Even the Western Digital 10,000 RPM SATA Raptor can only reach read/write speeds of about 65MB/s.

Answer 3

Speed. Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives tranfer data about 50% faster than standard ATA drives.

Answer 4

ate is old school,sata runs atleast 3 times as fast if not faster,the new technology works better with sata.so if your a gamer use sata

Answer 5

Standard IDE.
With 80286, the standard of the hard disks is the IDE. Installed on an independent controller (on a board fitting in bus ISA), the maximum rate of transfer does not exceed the 4,7 MB/s.

Standard IDE makes it possible to connect 2 hard disks (a Master - master and a slave - Slavic) on the same controller via an adapted cable. This cable is always the same one. The maximum size of a hard disk is limited to 540 MB (thus not CD-Rom reader). The passage to a higher size obliges to use a specific program.
E-IDE or Ultra - IDE
With technology, the hard disks are largely above the 540 MB. Standard E-IDE left with the 486DX-4 and first Pentium (some Pentium do not have this controller). The maximum size of the supported hard disks is 8.4 GB. Higher hard disks are supported and even detected by the BIOS, but the formatting never authorizes more than 8,4 GB (even with Fdisk). Indeed, the ordering of partition FDISK comes from the operating system.

The speed of transfer on these discs is limited to 10 MB/s. So that the discs of capacities higher than 540 MB are taken into account, it is necessary that the disc is detected in the bios like LBA (logical Block Adressing).

Since the E-IDE, the CD-Rom readers are recognized like peripherals IDE.

With the technology of hard disks E-IDE (and following), you can install 4 peripherals. Indeed, controllers E-IDE include 2 ports (primary and secondary) on which you can connect each time a master (main) and a slave. The parameter setting of the Masters - Slave is done by bridging with the back of the peripheral. Attention all the same, controllers UDMA 133 are only on the first controller. You cannot thus generally not connect these discs on the secondary port.

Transfer modes.
Appeared on the level of Pentium, PIO mode indicates the speed of the interface. It is managed by the CPU and corresponds to the way in which the instructions charged are treated to transfer the data to the hard disk. If the process offers interesting flows, it presents the disadvantage of mobilizing the resources of the processor. It thus does not allow high level performances in multitask. Each disc supports a mode PIO from its design. Simplest is to leave the mode of automatic control in the BIOS, which guarantees the highest mode authorized for the disc.

ATA Hard drive version Mode Maximum speed (MB/s
ATA-0 PIO Mode 0 3,3
ATA-1 PIO Mode 1 5,2
ATA-1 PIO Mode 2 8,3
ATA-2 PIO Mode 3 11,1
ATA-3 PIO Mode 4 16,7
ATA-4, UDMA-33 Ultra DMA 33,6
The hard disks of type Serial ATA were announced in May 2001. They leave truly only in the second quarter 2003.

Serial ATA is a new manager (controller) of hard disks of type IDE. The internal technology of the hard disk is thus similar with that of the parallel hard disks. Only the communication is replaced by a connection series. The parallel transfer clearly starts to pose problems of synchronization of the signals when one increases the speed transmission. This standard should not be introduced in the near future for the readers CD - DVD and engravers who do not require for performances since the rate of transfer is initially limited by the speed of read/write on CD, even if Philips introduced recently an engraver of DVD S-ATA.

The design speed is 150 MB/s (for 133 MB/s in mode ATA-133). The increase speed is thus not very significant. On the other hand, the future standards should increase this speed up to 600 MB/s.

The large difference thus comes from the interface. In the case of discs IDE, the controller allows the connection of 2 peripherals. The band-width is thus divided between the 2. This reduces the performances. On the other hand, in serial ATA, each hard disk is connected to its own controller via his own cable. This implies that there are no more bridging to configure for the main modes/slaves. With the difference of the preceding standards, hard disks S-ATA use a connection series on 7 pins (for 40 in the case of connections ATA parallels). Four wire are used for the transfer of the data (1 signal of sending, 1 signal of reception and 2 masses). This clearly reduces the dimension of the connecting cable. The length of the cable is limited to 1 meter (against 45 cm for a ATA-133) Third difference, the discs serial ATA are hot plug, they can be connected (or disconnected) with the lit PC. All the operating systems do not authorize this function.

One finds in the trade of the adapters allowing to pass from a controller ATA to a hard disk S-ATA. This solution limits nevertheless speed to 133 MB/s (ATA-133) or even 100 for chipsets INTEL from where a limited interest. Conversely, of the adapters allow to connect parallel hard disks on Serial controller.

Certain functions are similar with hard disks SCSI as the control of the errors at the time of the transfers. The Serial-ATA positions like a SCSI Low Cost. For recall, the fastest standard SCSI allows rates of transfer up to 320 MB/s.

2 controllers S-ATA are established directly on chipsets INTEL (i865 and i875), VIA KT-600 (Athlon, often in option) and others in more than 2 controllers ATA.

Evolution of SATA, S-ATA 2 is left at the beginning of 2005. In theory, it's double maximum rate transfer. The theoretical flow thus passes from 150 to 300 MB/s