SATA 3

posted on March 12th, 2010, 11:54 pm

I read about this and USB 3.0 last year sometime and really had no interest in getting the technical specs because there wasn't really the hardware (commercially/affordably) to support at the time.  So now I'm shopping for another HDD (boy how fast 1TB fills up!!  ) and I'm seeing nicely priced SATA 3 HDDs.  Now, I have yet to read the technical specs on it so please bear with the "stupid question." 

Does SATA 3 involve any architectural/design differences or was a new method of routing data developed?  If any other similar technological changes are any indicator (again, without reading the details/specs on SATA 3....its been a long week so I'm lazy tonight.) I'm going to assume the latter option.  The optimist in me is hoping that I could just upgrade my firmware and make use of the insane speed of SATA 3.....but it is more than likely probably a fundamental change to the hardware.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know......other than buying a new MOBO 

And on a side note, anyone know of any websites that will superimpose your face pictures with Borg or cyborg components?  My son and I have this on going thing this year trying to convince each other that we are or are not cyborgs.  He gets a kick out of it so I thought if I found a picture of me, I could prove to him I am indeed a cyborg. 

posted on March 13th, 2010, 12:01 am

I know there is one that will superimpose Optomous-Prime's face over yours.Don't know about borg though.

I don't know the offical site, but you can just google it.

[Myles]

posted on March 13th, 2010, 12:07 am

Last edited by Myles on March 13th, 2010, 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

sata 3 may be able to handle increased speeds, but a conventional hard drive (magnetic disks) will not be able to take advantage of the full speed, because even though the sata link is good, the disk just cant work that fast. The only devices capable of using all of sata 1 transfer speed are solid state drives (SSDs) which are stupidly expensive per GB. so if you are filling up terabytes of space (with what i ask? thats a lot of space!) you will probably not find SSDs that useful, and you would look to magnetic disks, in which case sata 3 will be no better than sata 1. So just get a normal sata drive with massive terabytes of space. or stop filling up terabytes of space 

EDIT: also about sata 3 compatibility, i doubt it will be backwards compatible, ie it will probably need a new port, i'm reasonably sure its more power (electricity) hungry, so will probably need significant hardware upgrades.

posted on March 13th, 2010, 1:29 am

its not so much sata 3 as in third generation as it is sata 3gbps or 3 gigabits per second and ill quote something i found on a website as to if you should buy one 

3Gbps. Because most SATA controllers limit their ports to one hard drive per channel and current desktop SATA drives top out around 72MBps during sustained reads, it doesn’t make much difference whether the interface can handle 150MBps (a 1.5Gbps interface’s theoretical maximum transfer rate using 8/10 encoding) or 300MBps (3Gbps). It’s like building a highway for 200mph racing but most cars can’t go faster than 100mph. Right now, 3Gbps is more of a future-proofing technology than a necessity.

Computer Power User Article - 3Gbps SATA Hard Drives
read the article it should be a help to you.

posted on March 13th, 2010, 12:18 pm

@Dircome, the question was about Sata 3, the new Sata specification which runs at 6Gb/s.

Sata 2 runs at 3GB/s

either way your quote is a well phrased explanation of how newer Sata transfer speeds are way faster than larger drives can handle. 

posted on March 13th, 2010, 3:28 pm

o wait i missed that hmm i usally keep up with such things o well

posted on March 13th, 2010, 11:50 pm

Thanks guys, I got a chance to read up on it.  Sucks that SSDs cost so much!

posted on April 1st, 2010, 7:17 pm

I know there is one that will superimpose Optomous-Prime's face over yours.Don't know about borg though.

I don't know the offical site, but you can just google it.

posted on April 1st, 2010, 7:20 pm

Thanks guys, I got a chance to read up on it.  Sucks that SSDs cost so much!

SSDs are great for quick access and for portable stuff, but if you wanna store large amounts of data SSDs arent great, because they have really fast access for a small amount, but slow access over time.

they are sprinters, but cant run marathons.

thats why normal magnetic drives are better for large storage.

posted on April 1st, 2010, 10:37 pm

o and they are nice for laptops too because if you drop and laptop with a regular drive it will bend the read/write arm. However ssd's dont have that and wont break.

posted on April 1st, 2010, 10:44 pm

true, for portables they are great, just dont expect fast copying of large amounts of data. if i had a laptop that i actually took out my house i would have SSDs if possible. but i never carry my huge laptop around lol