Prabhat IT Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

The following advises are based on many years of experience. They are provided as a free service to our customers and visitors. However, Prabhat I.T Solutions is not responsible for any damage as a result of following any of these guides.

Normal hard drives like we all are used to using are IDE. There is a new standard called Serial ATA, which boosts transfer speeds up to 150MBs (as opposed to a max of 133MBs). The standard also improves airflow and has some other benefits. However, using SATA means you will need an SATA controller, an SATA drive, and an SATA power cable/adapter (often not included on power supplies yet). The actual speed improvement of SATA vs. IDE is hardly noticeable with current drives unless you are talking about the high end SATA drives using RPMs higher than the 7200. If you are building an average/upper end system there is currently no pressing reason to go SATA. – However we do recommend that you choose a motherboard with SATA onboard, that way when the technology improves and you are ready for your next upgrade you will be ready.

Among the name-branded ATA66/100/133 hard drives, we don’t see mush of a difference in return rates, which is our way of measuring product reliabilities. Customers prefer one brand to the other, often because of historic and one-time bad experiences. Yet, some other customers may just have the exact opposite brand preference. Therefore, we suggest going with the highest gigabytes for your rupees. Choosing hard drives, instead of brand.

However, be careful in where you buy. Some manufacturers have restrictions on how warranty is done with OEM hard drives. Some of them only honor the three-year warranty if they are purchased from an authorized distributor or registered reseller. Prabhat I.T Solutions is an authorized distributor or registered reseller for all the hard drive brands we carry.

There is only a small price difference among 40, 80, 120 and even 160 gig ATA100/ATA133 IDE hard drives. We suggest getting as large a hard drive as possible if you don’t care to spend 300 or 500 more for 40 or 80GB more space! That’s cheap! Especially consider a 4 or 8GB hard drive used to cost Rs 20,000 only a few years ago.

If you are working with a limited budget a 40 gig or 80 gig drive is plenty for many people!

The above is true for most average users, for whom reliability of a hard drive is often more important than the functionality or specification. For more advanced, power users, one may need to look into the specifications of a hard drive with a magnifying glass to see some differences and then decide which one is better. Hard drives with 7200RPM (normally 5400RPM) are good choices.

Ultra DMA EIDE is a fast technology, with an average access time of 11-12ms. (Ultra DMA is another name for ATA such as ATA66/100/133 on IDE) in comparison, SCSI II(often also referred as Ultra or narrow SCSI) hard drives typically have an average access time of 9.5ms. In our opinion it is not worth the extra money to go with SCSI II. The standard IDE drives using ATA100/133 speeds are just fine for most applications. You can also get a boost by using the new SATA standard. Some SATA drives using high RPMs may have better access times as well (compared to IDE).

Then if you are REALLY serious about getting fast access to your data, such as large databases and image files, consider using one of the latest hard drives technologies, Ultra-2-wide SCSI III with an access time of 5.2-5.7ms! Wow! That’s FAST! But you’ll pay for the speed. You also need to use a more expensive Ultra-2-wide SCSI controller.

Do not buy refurbished hard drives, no matter how low the prices are. The potential trouble down the road is not worth the savings. Used, but working hard drives are a better and possibly more reliable way to save money.

10.

The best way to upgrade a hard drive to a larger one without reloading the operating system, programs and documents is to use utilities software called Norton Ghost. Ghost allows you to copy (or “ghost” as some may say) the entire content of the older, smaller hard drive to a larger one very quickly. All the programs and configurations are “transferred”. The Ghost program is available in Norton System Works 2005 CD.

The difference between IDE and Serial ATA (SATA).

If someone to say they preferred a serial connection to a parallel connection, most would laugh at them uncontrollably. Serial COM ports have always been known to be one of the slowest connections in modern computers. However, the newest version of Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), Serial ATA, is set to sweep parallel ATA off its feet.

IDE vs. SATA

	IDE	Serial ATA
Maximum Speed	100 MB/s with burst up to 133 MB/s	150MB/s Currently 300MB/s by 2005 and 600MB/s by 2008
Cable length	18 inches	1 meter (about 40inches)
Cable pins	40	7
Power connector pins	4	15
Data transfer wires used	26	2
Power consumption	5V	250 mV

Between the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 motherboards with onboard SATA adapters were released to the public market. For users that are not ready to purchase new motherboards, SATA RAID controllers are available as well. Most hard drives manufacturers released their first SATA hard drives for sale in the first or second quarter of 2004. For those that would like to take advantage of SATA’s longer and thinner cabling requirements without having to purchase new hard drives, SATA adapters, can be purchased to convert current drives to accept SATA cables. To fully implement the SATA standard a new motherboard, a new hard drive or other storage device and a new power supply or power adapter must be purchased. For the time being, power adapters, can be used with existing power supplies.

When looking at the hardware for serial connections, one can easily see the differences between it and IDE. The SATA connector is much smaller than its parallel counterpart. This effectively means that the motherboard manufacturers will have more room to include more on board options as well as being able to offer better board layouts, as this will not be so restricted by the ATA connectors.

It is unknown how quickly most consumers will begin using Serial ATA devices. The majority of current PC users will not want to trade in their existing system just to take advantage of a few extra MB/s. However, many technical users and PC junkies may find themselves huddled over their favorite suppliers? Website waiting for the instant the next set of SATA drives become available for sale. Furthermore, many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) will look to incorporate SATA devices in their PCs in the near future. The Parallel ATA interface is one of the few aspects of a computer system that has remained unchanged for many years. However, it appears IDE may be in search for its final resting spot once Serial ATA begins to consume the retail market.