SATA or IDE Hard Drives?

[kandcorp 0]

Wanted to know if any of you guys install SATA Hard Drives instead of IDE in your PC DVR's. If so any big difference in perf. or speed.

 

We just switched over to SATA and I know they claim to be faster but is there really that big of a difference.

 

Thanks,

[steve6690 0]

The speed is not the issue. I'd use SATA, but only because of the thinner cables and the resultant airflow/cooling advantages.

[rory 0]

they're quieter?

[heloder 0]

Faster

Bigger (1 TB soon)

Quieter

Made for DVR’s (designed for tivo type environment but still works for us)

Better air flow

Longer Warranty

[Jasper 0]

SATA drives are phasing out E-IDE drives.

 

You will notice there are some good prices on some of the larger IDE drives right now due to that reason.

If I put together a new system I would only use SATA because that is the future.

 

As far as performance gains, there is no hard drive in existence to take advantage of the faster bandwidth available, at the moment anyway and probably the foreseeable future.

 

External SATA drives will offer greater performance that USB 2.0 and 1394A (Fire wire faster than USB, slightly). The SATA drives are using 133GB per platter compared to 100GB per platter, which increases performance.

 

SATA drives also offer Native Command Queuing as well which in nice for multi-user environments. SATA drives are similar to SCSI drives in this respect, but not quite as good, yet.

 

The cables are different; they use a different power connector and a thinner ribbon cable, which allows more air flow, thus contributing to better cooling in the computer.

[Guest]

In my opinion ATA is better. Use ATA if you can (capacity, etc). SATA makes IRQ problems - especially in PC based DVRs where recording board takes some (often many) IRQ`s.

[Jasper 0]

In my opinion ATA is better. Use ATA if you can (capacity, etc). SATA makes IRQ problems - especially in PC based DVRs where recording board takes some (often many) IRQ`s.

 

I am sorry, I have to disagree with you regarding SATA having IRQ problems.

 

You can have IRQ problems for various reasons, not just because you put in a SATA drive.

 

That must be your personal experience with them.

 

I have PC’s that have both ATA and SATA drives in the same system and I have no IRQ problems.

 

My personal PC has so many devices connected to it you would think it would have IRQ problems, but it doesn’t. It has SATA drives and ATA drives inside of it as well.

[kandcorp 0]

I can tell a big difference when comparing both DVR's side by side.(old hardware config and new one)

 

With the new SATA HDD's, upgraded Radeon 256MB PCI Express Card, and intel mobo ....WOW

[Thomas 0]

IRQ's won't be an issue. Sata controllers almost always have a dedicated IRQ assigned to them.

[Roman 0]

Are they really quieter? I did not make an extensive study, rahter paid attention by incident recently.

 

WD2000JB - 200 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache - EIDE/ATA

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=38

 

Acoustics

[image] Idle Mode 28 dBA (average)

[image] Seek Mode 0 33 dBA (average)

[image] Seek Mode 3 29 dBA (average)

 

WD2000JD - 200 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache - SATA

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=58

 

Acoustics

[image] Idle Mode 34 dBA (average)

[image] Seek Mode 0 36 dBA (average)

[image] Seek Mode 3 35 dBA (average)

 

It did upset me so I remembered.

[CSG 0]

SATA allows for inexpensive RAID if you need it, as compared to SCSI

[mfennell 0]

SATA allows for inexpensive RAID if you need it, as compared to SCSI

? eide can be used for RAID also

[Jasper 0]

Has anyone used any of the external enclosures for SATA drives?

 

The enclosures seem to be expensive. I have to do some more surfing.

 

But at least your data transfer rate won't be hindered by the interface.

 

I have a bought my last FireWire and USB drive at least for personal use.

[x0rsw1tch 0]

SATA (150GB/s) has minimal gains in speed as opposed to the EIDE (133*MB/s max) interface... However, SATA 2.0 which has 300Gb/s rate is slightly faster than SATA 1.0 and there are few chipsets that support it. It would be nice if DVR cards supports more chipsets/AMD. Essentially SATA is a more efficient technology especially SATA controllers with onboard processors.

 

As far as performance gains, there is no hard drive in existence to take advantage of the faster bandwidth available, at the moment anyway and probably the foreseeable future.

 

WD Raptors (10K RPM, 16MB Cache) are quite fast SATA drives.

 

*: Western Digital does not make IDE133 drives, but Maxtor does... But who wants Maxtor?

[Jasper 0]

My statement is still an accurate one regarding no drive is able to achieve data transfer rates of 150MBps. A raptor is capable of about half of that speed. Now if put them in a RAID you can get faster data transfer rates, but one drive by itself gets nowhere near even the SATA I specification.

 

SATA II is just a larger lane for data. It will allow developing technologies to have the ability to transfer 300MBps, but right now spending more money on SATA II over SATA I is just a waste of money as far as data transfer rates are concerned.

 

You might be thinking of internal data transfer rates which is different and does not have to do with actual data transfer rate from the hard drive to the BUS.

[Jasper 0]

Anybody using external eSATA drives yet?

 

They have shielded cables that allow the drive to be located 2 meters away from the system. The cables are designed to withstand 5000 connects/disconnects compared to the internal type which allow 50.

 

These drives should really help with additional storage needed outside the computer and maintain the same performance as if they were in the computer. Should be beneficial for recording many video streams simultaneously.

[chewingyu 0]

Recently I have been experiencing problems with my newly installed Huper DVRs and my vendor says it is using SATA drives. Suspecting it to be a problem, it says that it will revert to using IDE drives.

 

Also, upon my insisting of a RAID 5 back up system, it says that it would be better to use IDE drives.

 

Please advise.

[rory 0]

Well Systems with SATA drives are better than those with IDE .. for pro systems at least .. otherwise IDE is fine for basic systems, or testing.

[chewingyu 0]

How would you define a "basic system"? I am connecting 23 Huper DVRs to 483 cameras.

[rory 0]

Then you want RAID ... and the best HDDs that are out there .. thats not in any way a basic or even normal high end system .. type of Raid you will need to speak to the IT guys for that part. But I would think Raid Disk Arrays. Basic IDE systems wont cut it.

[chewingyu 0]

Yes, I will be getting a RAID 5. I thought you can still do a RAID with IDE drives?

[rory 0]

perhaps .. like i said .. talk to the IT guys on that one

I think Raid 5 is just a way of organising the HDDs ..

still try to get the best HDDs you can .. and best PC Hardware ..

 

When you are ready to tweak each one ..check this out ..

 

http://www.bahamassecurity.com/uploads/XP-TWEAKING.pdf

(50KB Adobe PDF)

[Jasper 0]

I am not familair with that DVR, but unless their is an icompatability issue with the SATA drives I would stick with them as they are better all the way around. Better performance inside the computer and externally as well.

 

You can run RAID Arrays with SATA drives or IDE, but SATA drives have more features than IDE drives. But they may not be utlized in that DVR?

 

IDE drives are cheaper than SATA drives if that is a consideration. IDE drives if used externally have limited performance due to their bandwidth limitation of the 1394 and USB 2 connections.

 

Hope this helps.

[chewingyu 0]

Say, I am reviewing the need to have Raid 5 for my CCTV systems. I think it may be an overkill. An overkill which costs much more. I am thinking perhaps that as and when one of the hdd fails, I will downgrade it to a Raid 1.

 

Anyone with any thoughts on this? Rory??

[Soundy 1]

Say, I am reviewing the need to have Raid 5 for my CCTV systems. I think it may be an overkill. An overkill which costs much more. I am thinking perhaps that as and when one of the hdd fails, I will downgrade it to a Raid 1.

 

Anyone with any thoughts on this? Rory??

 

How important is your data? RAID 5 isn't overkill if it's critical that your data be able to survive a disk failure. RAID 0 and 1 don't provide any kind of redundancy. RAID 5 allows one drive to fail, and allows you to swap it out without losing any data. Most RAID 5 controllers also allow hot-swapping of the drives, which means NO downtime.

 

We just put an Enhance Technologies RS8-IP rackmount enclosure on a site, loaded with eight 1TB SATA-II drives, and set up for RAID 5... 6.5TB of usable space (with system overhead and parity space), all hot-swappable. Drive dies, pop it out, put in a replacement, and it rebuilds the array automatically. I think the enclosure ran around $3k (without drives)... not bad for what it does and the reliability it provides.