Re: should I get SATA drives for old PC?
On 2009-07-29 08:54, Steve Kleene wrote:
Before I build a Lenny system on my 5-year-old PC, I want to replace the two
internal hard drives. I'm not too swift with hardware specs and want to make
sure I get the right drives. I will probably get 500GB drives and do not
expect to set up RAID.
The drives now are Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 6K040L0 40GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra
ATA133. There isn't much of a selection anymore with the ATA100 or ATA133
interfaces; most new drives are SATA 3 GB/s.
I'd use the PATA drive as the boot disk. BIOSes (especially 5yo
ones!) just seem to like IDE devices better.
The motherboard is an Asus P4P800 Deluxe. It has two SATA connectors and
came with the cables. The motherboard manual says, "The current Serial ATA
interface allows up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate" (i.e. >133).
So now to the questions:
1. What difficulties (if any) might I expect in setting up the SATA drives?
A quick search found quite a few posts where people had to mess with the
BIOS, add a SATA driver, etc. with this motherboard.
The driver *should* be in the stock kernel. BIOS fiddling is
possible, but not difficult. You'll probably only need to tell it
which of your drives to boot from.
2. If I buy a SATA 3 GB/s drive, will this motherboard only give me 150 MB/s
anyway? In that case maybe I should just go with ATA100 or ATA133. I
assume either would work.
Modern rotational devices don't even saturate ATA133, much less
SATA-1, and nowhere near the "SATA II"/3Gbps capability.
Fortunately, SATA II drives are backwards compatible.
So, I'd put the OS on the IDE drive, and /home and swap on the SATA
drive
--
Scooty Puff, Sr
The Doom-Bringer
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