Will s-ATA take definitely the place of IDE?

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02 May 07 17:08 by geno888 in category Uncategorized To news archive

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It is not a secret that all recently manufactured mainboards have only one IDE slot, and this is not really a good news for people with a big stash of burners. In fact, the main issue related with s-ATA controllers is that they are suited purposely to manage hard disk drives (HDD), and not burners.

What is the problem? Simple: optical drives requires ATAPI protocols to work correctly, whereas HDD doesn’t need ATAPI at all. So, controller manufacturers are not implementing these protocols in their hardwares. Consequently, s-ATA controllers have an excellent performance with HDDs but can have a lot of problems to work with optical drives.

Besides a less chaotic cabling, however, currently s-ATA optical drives have no real advantages compared to IDE ones. An example can be found on an article published at The Inquirer, in which Asus DRW-1814BLT s-ATA burner was compared with an IDE drive.

Thanks to GristyMcFisty for letting us know about this news.

10 Comments

mrQQ: Posts: 833; Posted on: 02 May 07 18:25

I'm sorry, but what's s-ATA? perhaps you meant SATA..

shuma02: Posts: 72; Posted on: 02 May 07 18:33

Well, it would make sense that a 16x IDE drive is just as fast as a 16x SATA drive.

btspm: Posts: 611; Posted on: 02 May 07 22:56

It's just a chicken or egg issue. Early SATA controllers didn't implement ODD-friendly protocols because there were no SATA ODDs. Now that Intel and the mobo manufacturers are forcing drive makers to move to SATA, the on-board controllers will work to acheive a more balanced HDD/ODD focus.

happyscrappy: Posts: 153; Posted on: 03 May 07 02:21

Say what? I have an nForce 4 SLI chipset. It's, what, 3 years old now? I use a Lite-On LH-20AS1 (SATA) drive on it. Works GREAT. The chipsets that don't work with SATA ATAPI are now so old you can't even get processors that fit on the boards anymore. I agree the performance of SATA optical drives is no better than PATA optical drives. This is the same with HDDs, and yet SATA is doing well in the HDD space. Optical drive manufacturers are having trouble differentiating (i.e. keeping prices up) in the PATA space. Look for lots more SATA optical drives soon. Every manufacturer will jump at the chance to sell SATA optical drives given the $5-$10 price premium.

SithTracy: Posts: 280; Posted on: 03 May 07 02:26

The reviewer should have tried the IDE drive on a Jmicron IDE controller... He probably would have a different opinion.

applegodel8: Posts: 151; Posted on: 03 May 07 04:45

i think they should make a new interface just for optical drives that use a small SATA like cable, but support what the optical drives need to function correctly. i think separating stuff like that makes the system perform better. like when you hook a optical drive and a hard drive on the same IDE cable the performance would degrade, so keeping separate is better, but i hate those big ribbon cables and even with round ones there is still the connector thats big, so how about OATA optical ATA cable. just a thought.

This message was edited at: 03-05-2007 04:46

shaolin007: Posts: 883; Posted on: 03 May 07 16:33

I have an Abit AW9D-MAX and it has 7 internal SATA jacks plus 1 external. Initially, I was concerned about the singular IDE connector but came to realize that it is really all I need. When I assembled my system, I found it much easier to connect SATA HDDs than IDE and the cabling took up much less space. Another concern, was when I was loading the OS but again no problems there either. IDE, your days are numbered.

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 03 May 07 19:07

I wonder why is talking about the SATA replacing the PATA connectors on motherboards. What is bother me is presence of the FDD conector on every motherboard. Not to mention presence of ancient paralel port, serial port and ps2 ports. USB flash memory is more convenient than 1000 FDD, and periferals are conecting today using USB, firewire and E-SATA. The presence of one PATA conector is good for compatibility with old products, but will be eventualy discontinued (i hope so) in 2-3 years.

Jagaer: Posts: 40; Posted on: 04 May 07 18:51

I agree with gogu that the FDD has been long dead, and IDE should be next. I disagree that parallel and serial ports are dead, however. The majority of consumer electronics are now USB, but both parallel and serial are much more useful to hobbiests due to their simplicity. I agree that they are both going to be gone relatively soon..but at least there are PCIe cards for the ports.

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 04 May 07 20:28

I have been using SATA and it is the best. No coaster, fast and quieted. Cable connection is so easy. I loveee SATA

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