Switching btw SATA and PATA

[Offspring2099]

My HD has been connected to a mobo with a SATA cable, which was connected to a converter, because my HD is not a true SATA drive.

Anyways, I'm doing some troubleshooting, and in the process, I needed to go back to PATA. So I removed the SATA cable and connected a regular 40pin cable.

The problem is that my system is dragging. It takes about 10 minutes to boot windows and when I benchmark the file system, there is a sigificant slowdown. By at least 90%. Do I need to let the system know that I swiched cables? Did I miss something? Thank you for your time.

Mobo: NF7-S. (v2.0, I think.)
HD: WD 7200 110GB.

[KillrBuckeye]

I think it's happening because your Windows installation was set up to use a SATA hard drive controller. When you put your HDD on the IDE (PATA) channel, it is probably getting confused because it doesn't have the appropriate IDE HDD controllers installed. That's just my uneducated guess. You might want to try looking in Device Mananger to see if there are any devices with exclamation points next to them. If so, you may need to load some drivers. Another option might be to repair the Windows installation, but in general it's probably not a good idea to switch back and forth between PATA and SATA on the same boot drive unless you reinstall the OS each time.

[nd4spdbh2]

are you using a 40 pin 80 conductor IDE cable.... because if your using an old 40 pin 40 conductor cable you will get a big performance hit because you will be limited to a max of ATA 66. found that out the hard way.

[Offspring2099]

Thanks,

As soon as I get home, I'll check my cable and check my device manager. I think it might be 40 pin 40, because its just an older cable.


Another question, on my setup, does the data bottleneck at the adapter? Because it goes from mobo via SATA cable, then into adapter, and the adapter connects to my HD's 40 pin, since it's not a true sata HD. Is that setup better then 40 pin 80?

Thanks again.

EDIT: found this on a STICKY,
Q7. What about PATA to SATA Adaptors? What are they, and are they a smart choice for my system?

A7. These small converters that use a controller chip to convert parallel signals (from the PATA hard drive) to a serial signal. In fact, many of the first SATA drives were no more than PATA drives with a built-in SATA converter!

Advantages:
Use of a thinner cable
No need to upgrade a driver or mess with the OS

Disadvantages:
The converters only allow for roughly about half the SATA I spec of 150 MB/s available for the drive.

So with a converter am I limited to only roughly 75MB/s, so is 40 pin 80 better in my case, which is at 133MB/s?

[Spade]

it is ALWAYS better to go 80 pin.
why bottleneck yourself?
it may or may not use it but it CAN'T
if you use the 40 pin.
also, i've used 80 pin ide cables
on drives as old as ata33. so it WILL
work, you just may or may not get as much
throughput as you couldve going true sata.

make sense?

[Offspring2099]

Gotcha, 80 pin > SATA adapter. I guess I'm going shopping. Thanks.

[Offspring2099]

it is ALWAYS better to go 80 pin.
why bottleneck yourself?
it may or may not use it but it CAN'T
if you use the 40 pin.
also, i've used 80 pin ide cables
on drives as old as ata33. so it WILL
work, you just may or may not get as much
throughput as you couldve going true sata.

make sense?

Yes it does, but is 80 pin > SATA adapter method.

Thanks.

[KillrBuckeye]

Sorry to say, but I guarantee that the adaptor is not the cause of your 10 minute boot time and 90% slowdown in benchmarks. Your Windows installation is not behaving because you installed it using the SATA controller and now you've decided to switch to the IDE controller. That's a no-no unless you take steps to fix it or reinstall Windows.

[nd4spdbh2]

Thanks,

As soon as I get home, I'll check my cable and check my device manager. I think it might be 40 pin 40, because its just an older cable.


Another question, on my setup, does the data bottleneck at the adapter? Because it goes from mobo via SATA cable, then into adapter, and the adapter connects to my HD's 40 pin, since it's not a true sata HD. Is that setup better then 40 pin 80?

Thanks again.

EDIT: found this on a STICKY,


So with a converter am I limited to only roughly 75MB/s, so is 40 pin 80 better in my case, which is at 133MB/s?


that is todally wrong... sata to pata converters do not bottle neck the performance of the drive... sata = 150MBps and your running a drive that can only output a max of 133MBps (ata 133)... thats like saying that from the water spicket you are runing a 2inch pipe then use a converter to a 4 inch pipe and that this conversion to a bigger pipe with the ability to flow more volume of water will somehow limit what is comming out of the 2 inch pipe... doesnt work that way

the sata converter is a 40 pin IDE interface but it doesnt have to have 80 conductors (wires) because there is no distance for the PATA signal to travel... the difference between a 40pin 40 conductor cable and a 40/80 is the fact that the 40/80 has a ground wire inbetween each signal wire to prevent crosstalk and allow higer frequencies over a distance of a max of 24 inches.

I have seen hd tach graphs with 2 identical drives... seagate 80gb drives.. both 7200.7 only diff was one was straight SATA and the other was PATA with a converter... they had the same exact graph.

[Offspring2099]

Sorry to say, but I guarantee that the adaptor is not the cause of your 10 minute boot time and 90% slowdown in benchmarks. Your Windows installation is not behaving because you installed it using the SATA controller and now you've decided to switch to the IDE controller. That's a no-no unless you take steps to fix it or reinstall Windows.

I agree with you, this is what I figured originaly, but other than the reinstall or windows repair, I guess I was looking for a manual way, and I notice that you mentioned to look into the drivers.

that is todally wrong... sata to pata converters do not bottle neck the performance of the drive... sata = 150MBps and your running a drive that can only output a max of 133MBps (ata 133)... thats like saying that from the water spicket you are runing a 2inch pipe then use a converter to a 4 inch pipe and that this conversion to a bigger pipe with the ability to flow more volume of water will somehow limit what is comming out of the 2 inch pipe... doesnt work that way

the sata converter is a 40 pin IDE interface but it doesnt have to have 80 conductors (wires) because there is no distance for the PATA signal to travel... the difference between a 40pin 40 conductor cable and a 40/80 is the fact that the 40/80 has a ground wire inbetween each signal wire to prevent crosstalk and allow higer frequencies over a distance of a max of 24 inches.

I have seen hd tach graphs with 2 identical drives... seagate 80gb drives.. both 7200.7 only diff was one was straight SATA and the other was PATA with a converter... they had the same exact graph.

I'm a little lost on one point. If the device max output 133MB/s, how can Straight SATA and PATA with adapter/converter be the same speed. Wouldn't the actual drive slow down the transfer rate?

[KillrBuckeye]

I'm a little lost on one point. If the device max output 133MB/s, how can Straight SATA and PATA with adapter/converter be the same speed. Wouldn't the actual drive slow down the transfer rate?The PATA interface is what limits bandwidth to 133 MB/s. However, no single 7.2k drive comes close to saturating that bandwidth in sustained transfers, so the actual interface, i.e. SATA vs. PATA, won't affect performance much. Further, even if the adaptor reduced the max bandwidth by some amount, the single drive still wouldn't be able to achieve that bandwidth in sustained transfers. This is why nd4spdbh2 observed the same HDD benchmarks with and without the adaptor.

[Offspring2099]

Understood, thank you.

[Spade]

well crap. since i don't use converters , i had no idea they were
40 pin ata ide's.

i go true sata or ide, no mix of both or either. once in a blue moon
i'll use a converter to power a sata drive off a molex thats about it.
sorry for my n00b'ish ways on that.

it's kind of stupid if the converters are 40 pin come to think of it.