Sata
 

I rarely post in this thread, but I decided to give this I try before asking someone in Akihabara (which is what I usually do). Has anyone here have any experience in buying and installing this new format?

I am considering to buy a SATA HD as my sixth harddrive. Why SATA you ask? Because my motherboard has two SATA connectors and it much less of a hassle to have my insides of my computer with more IDE cables connected to an already full IDE controller.

Question is, granted SATA uses a serial cable - I assume that a special cable will be included in the package as with all IDE HDs? How about the power cable? Do the use the same 4-pin connector or is it different?

Which brand - WD or Seagate (Maxtor counted out), may be the best in the long run performance?

Also, how is the HD noise? How about heat? Is it "safe enough" to slide it in underneath my floppy drive, or is it "worrisome enough" that my best bet is to use an open 5.25" drive bay with fans?

my friend uses sata on his computer and it works fine, the only problem was that you need the drivers for it or at least we did when we where installing xp pro. and as for the cables they came with my motherboard, and so did his grant it we build our pc's from the ground up custom made. As for a brand to use humm as for the hard drives get 2 Western Digital 74.0G 10,000rpm (Raptor) 8m Serial ATA :P i kidd umm i guess any western digital is good, get something like a Western Digital 200.0G 7200rpm 8m Serial ATA, I dont think it will make much diffrence unless you are a gamer, then i sugest the raptor drive.

Well, I have a 160GB Samsung and I'm quite happy with it. Having to install drivers for the drive was mildly annoying but that's pretty much it as far as my problems with sata go.

Atleast around here, all HDDs tend to be sold bulk-packed and as such they don't include any cables or screws. I don't know if this is the practice in Japan as well. I just used the cables that came with my motherboard. The power cable is different from a normal 4-pin connector, so you'll need an adapter (something that also came with my motherboard, one 4-pin to 2 SATA power cables). The sata power connector is a bit smaller than a normal 4-pin.

Heat and noise depend purely on the model. My Samsung is pretty close to inaudible and doesn't heat that much. Don't really know about WD or Seagate, but I'll just say that there's pretty much zero difference between SATA and IDE disks in term of heat and noise with comparable models so if you think a IDE disk would work fine below the floppy drive, a SATA disk shouldn't have any problems either.

Out of curiosity, why didn't you include Hitachi, Samsung or Maxtor as choices?

You should doublecheck your motherboard box. Retail mobo boxes typically include two serial cables and a power adapter for SATA to regular 4 pin molex (what your IDE hard drive use). Most hard drives sold on internet are not retail kits, therefore, they typically don't include cables. If you can't locate your SATA cables and power adapter (assuming your power supply doesn't have SATA power connectors), then you need to buy them separately.

As for brand. I recommend two brands. Either Samsung or Seagate. Samsungs are quieter and cooler than Seagate. I have both, but I prefer Seagates due to quality. One samsung IDE (not SATA) I have has developed a very slight higher pitch over 2 years compare to the other Seagate Barracuda IV and V's. But the other Samsungs are perfectly fine. Keep in mind, both brands are slower than Western Digitals in terms of data speed. In my opinion, I rather value quality over speed. I've lost several HD's with Western Digital, Maxtor, and Hitachi (formally IBM Deskstars). Haven't lost a single Seagate or Samsung yet.


And for location-wise. It's always a good idea to have fans over your HD's, make them last a heck lot longer. If you don't want to cool them, then grab the Samsung. It's the coolest one out of all the HD's I know. Very warm to the touch (like a steam towel to clean your hands at a resturant or before an airplane meal), but not hot like WD's or Hitachi's.

There are a few low cost options you may decide to take, other than buying a new case... go to home depot and buy some metal brackets/plates. Screw the brackets underneath the drive cage, in essense, make a suspending poor-man's drive cage. I don't recall what they're called, but another item you can use, it's in the pluming section, it's a metal strip with lots of holes in it, used for suspending copper pipe. You can also use that since it already has holes. That's assuming you have some space underneath your drive cage which most typical cases have. Or grab a 40 or 60mm case fan, mount it in front of that HD and put the HD at that floppy bay.

Thanks all for your help. After checking my ASUS box, yes it indeed had the necessary cables included.

I decided to buy a Seagate 160GB SATA harddrive as it was on sale at Yamagiwa Denki for 11,000 yen.