SATA or IDE harddrives

[gmc0032]

Hi I have a IDE harddrive and I was thinking about buying a SATA 3gbs harddrive. My motherboard is compatible with it  I'm just wondering how these SATA drives run because I never had one. I have a IDE DVD burner will that have any impact on the SATA drive.

[Calum]

SATA drives are generally no faster than IDE, however the cables are easier to manage, and newer drives tend to only be SATA.
My opinion: if you're after a new drive anyway go for SATA, otherwise there's no compelling reason to change.

[Sylver Cheetah 53]

I understand that S-ATA hardrives are a lot faster. They can go as up as 3GB/s.
As for the dvd unit, the speed should be the same. (52x for reading) So I don't think S-ATA would help you much.

[Calum]

If you can show me a benchmark or situation where the higher theoretical maximum transfer rate of SATA actually has an advantage over IDE, I'd be interested to see it.
SATA - 1500Mbit/sec (actually more like 150MB/sec) or 3000Mbit/sec (300MB/sec), whereas IDE has a maximum rate of 133MB/sec.  Hard drives can't generally transfer data that fast, so the extra 17 or 167 MB/sec transfer rate has no real impact.
Do correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, DVD drives can't read at 52X speed, the maximum is 20X which equates to 211Mbit/sec or 27MB/sec.

I'm not trying to be harsh on you Cheetah, just stating the facts.

[Eg0Death]

I don't have any benchmarks, but SATA 3Gb/s drives have Native Command Queuing.

[gmc0032]

thank you guys

[Calum]

Eg0Death, you're right about NCQ, however most things I've read say this is only useful in a server type of environment, and that for "normal" use it could even reduce HDD speed.  I don't use it on my drive.