Whats the real diff between SATA and UltraATA/133?

[ap673]

Is the only difference between SATA and UltraATA/133/100 that SATA has transfer rates up to 150 MB/sec. and thiner chords; and that UltraATA has transfer rates of 100 or 133 MB/sec. To me 17 MB/sec. isnt that big a deal. Whats the real world differnce in speed, ive heard that theyre pretty much the same?

[FTC]

Hi,

Simply put, no difference at all for current generation drives. Basically, only improved airflow in your case due to thinner cables (which by the way can be longer than PATA ones).

In the future, once disks can fully transfer more than 100 MB/sec (not yet reached) and SATA controllers/drivers start taking profit of things like TCQ we will see more advantages to SATA.

Regards
FTC

[ap673]

Thanks a lot, I thought that no programs today can reach 100MB/sec. anyway.

[SavageBasher]

They can, in raid 0. I think I saw this one guy hit over 120MB/sec.

[Xaotic]

Those speeds are on the PCI interface. The individual drives cannot saturate either channel. SATA has no possibility of channel contention, since there is only one drive per channel. PATA can have contention when trying to access both drives on a channel.