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Thread: SATA1 and SATA2 questions
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09-23-2006, 02:25 PM #1Junior Guru Wannabe
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SATA1 and SATA2 questions
My motherboard supports SATA2, but can I use SATA1 HDD ? And can I use SATA1 and SATA2 HDDs together to setup RAID on this motherboard ?
Thank you so much!
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09-23-2006, 03:38 PM #2Web Hosting Master
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You can use SATA1 on SATA2 controllers. SATA2 is backward compatible.
I'm not sure about the RAID question. I really wouldn't try that though.
When RAIDing any hard disks, you need to make sure that sector size is the same (same model hard disks preferable) otherwise you lose space. Additionally, SATA2 drives can write faster than SATA1, I'm assuming if you did try RAIDing them and the RAID controller accepted them, the hard disks would be written to at the lower SATA1 speed.
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09-23-2006, 05:07 PM #3Newbie
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SATA 2 doesn't really exist; it's a marketing term for SATA drives that can run 300mb/s, and optionally have NCQ, hotswap support, multi-lan support, etc. It's all the same SATA standard, and is all intercompatble.
Sector size is not the factor; drive size is. It's not possible to have different sector size between RAID drives.
No SATA drives on the market can saturate 150mb/s, so 300mb/s interface drives don't give any advantages. The only situation in which 300mb/s can be advantagous right now is if you are hooking multiple SATA drives up to a single SATA port using a multiplexer, which splits the bandwidth.
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09-24-2006, 12:59 PM #4WHT Addict
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Is SATA 2 more reliable than SATA 1?.
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09-24-2006, 03:00 PM #5Web Hosting Master
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As said above, they're basically the same thing and nothing more than a marketing ploy.
So no, SATA 2 is not more reliable.HostGuard.net - VPS Control Panel
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09-24-2006, 09:02 PM #6Web Hosting Master
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The big difference between SATA 1.5Gbps and SATA 3.0Gbps is that drives with the latter spec are more likely to have NCQ capability, which is important for servers. Then there are items like hot-swapping which is in the latter as well.
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09-24-2006, 09:10 PM #7Web Hosting Master
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well, if you use hardware RAID card, basically NCQ and/or 16M buffer become much less important because RAID card provides it's own command queuing and large buffer already.
SW RAID or non-RAID applications can certainly benefit a bit from NCQ and larger buffer. however, high RPM still is the most beneficial fator: raptor 36G/73G/150G are all SATA1 based!
other than raptor, WD RAID edition 24x7 enterprise drives are your best choice of SATA drives vs those "desktop" SATA from Seagate/maxtor/samsung/fujitsu, even you don't use HW RAID. the 24x7 reliability alone is worth that a little premium.