peeriebryan Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 What is the main performance difference between a 2mb and a 8mb harddisk cache? Is there a significant improvement in speed between a4200rpm disk and a 5400rpm disk? Will the faster speed generate moreheat, as my current 4200 HD laptop already runs quite hot? What's the main speed bottleneck? i.e. there's not much point in a fastdisk if other parts of my system are too slow to notice the benefits What is the diffeence between ATA and PATA interfaces and are they incompatible? I'm a mac man so I usually don't need to know such technical stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McFly Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Can't really help you on the speed and cache size issues Bryan. ATA is the same thing as PATA (Parallel ATA), I think. But these are definitely not compatible with Serial ATA drives. The connectors are totally different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoolHaddock Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 The difference between 2mb and 8mb cache wid be noticable. The more cache du has, the better. If du has looked at data recently, it will be in dy cache, and this is the first place the computer will look. If it is not in cache, ie. in normal memory, it will tak a peerie while longer fir the computer tae access it. There is a massive improvement in speed if du gets wan o da faster harddrives. I am currently using a 7200rpm hdd in my laptop. I read somewhere when I was researching them that a 7200 will run about 70% faster than a 4200. Also, the faster dy HDD whirls, the faster it will be able tae run programmes and access information. As for the heat it runs at, I'm no sure aboot that, but my een seems tae be no too bad (maybe a little hot). There is two types of HDD interface. Du gets SATA, which is da new kind, you get them on all the new Dell's and Apple's etc, and I think they are 100% compatible we the old PATA interfaces, but I wid check that first because I'm no 100% sure.PATA is da old kind. I think it is slower than the new SATA. All the big computer companies seem tae be phasing oot the old wans in favour of the new eens. I hope yin was some help........oh turd I'm missin' the spoot ebb! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoolHaddock Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Du's right mcfly, the connectors are different between SATA and PATA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McFly Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Du gets SATA, which is da new kind, you get them on all the new Dell's and Apple's etc, and I think they are 100% compatible we the old PATA interfaces, but I wid check that first because I'm no 100% sure. Not sure about that. I accidentally bought a Seagate SATA drive a couple of months ago to replace a Western Digital PATA and the connectors are totally different.They maybe are compatible as far as drivers and protocols are concerned, but that's no good if you've got the wrong plugs. Maybe adapters are available? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoolHaddock Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Yeah, du is right aboot da connectors being different. You wid think they wid make adapters since the drivers are basically the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yaduk Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 There are adaptors to port ATA(PATA) drives into SATA motherboard connectors kicking around. Work quite the thing. Though IDE ATA has a throughput up to 100Mbps they haven't really managed to get past 72Mbps. SATA is going to allow this maximum to reach further with some drives out now able to reach past the Ultra DMA 133Mbps limitations - up to 150Mbps! The best reason to get SATA drives is that they will not bottleneck your systems performance with their increased throughput. They also take less voltage, so you won't have so much power sucked out of your battery, and with the smaller cable that comes with them you'll get better airflow from your fans - so less heat hopefully! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peeriebryan Posted January 31, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Is ATA-100 compatible with ATA-150? In fact, could you tell me if I'm about to make an expensive mistake..... My current knackered drive is a 'TOSHIBA MK4025GAS' 37GB 4200rpm drive with an ATA-100 connection I'm thinking of ordering a Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 80Gb U100 8mb-cache 5400rpm 100mbps drive with an ATA-100 connection or Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 80Gb S150 8mb-cache 5400rpm 150mbps drive with an ATA-150 connection Should I stick to a ATA-100 connection, or is the 50mbps speed upgrade worth it? They're about the same price Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yaduk Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Whats your computer that you are trying to put it in? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peeriebryan Posted January 31, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Its a G4 iBook (1.07GHZ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yaduk Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Go for the: Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 80Gb U100 8mb-cache 5400rpm 100mbps drive with an ATA-100 connection Pretty sure that the G4 doesn't allow for upgrade to the SATA 150, its ATA-100 based .. though may be completely wrong here? I've never ventured far from the 8086 family of chipsets! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pooks Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 Yup, if it says that it is ATA150 then it should really be referring to it as SATA150. If you currently have ATA/PATA (you can tell if it has a wide ribbon-cable connecting it to the mobo) then stick with that. If it has SATA (small connector about the width of your finger and normally a red cable) then go for that. SATA is a great improvement over PATA but I can't see it being long before solid-state memory replaces the current offerings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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