Oh My GOD.. Where are the SATA hard drives already??!!!

Jesus christ.. I've had a SATA board for months thinking the SATA drives would be out by November and now we're going into January and I haven't even seen a review sample... what kind of crap is this.. What with the delay.. thanks for listening.. I had to vent this out....

I didn't pay extra for the SATA board so it can just look at it.. besides those tiny cables must help airflow

LMAO!

Windows 95-OSR2 was the first OS with USB support. Once it began shipping in 1996, every Tom, **** and Packard-Bell began putting USB ports on their motherboards.

Wanna know how many years it took for USB peripherals to begin showing up? Here's a hint: Packard Bell was gone before you could buy ten things to plug into the USB port on their junk boxes.

S-ATA was 95% gimmick from the beginning, don't be surprised that it was marketed that way.

By the way all of the next-generation drives are taking forever to get to market, I wouldn't expect to see native S-ATA hard drives available for sale for another six weeks at the earliest.

Maybe you can get one for Valentine's Day...


BHD

Overclocker456 said:

Jesus christ.. I've had a SATA board for months thinking the SATA drives would be out by November and now we're going into January and I haven't even seen a review sample... what kind of crap is this.. What with the delay.. thanks for listening.. I had to vent this out....

I didn't pay extra for the SATA board so it can just look at it.. besides those tiny cables must help airflow

Click to expand...

i just look at it like this: somebody has to make the technology first and it was the motherboard makers & the 3rd party drive controllers that have jumped in and added it. the only real benefit that i see from sata is the fact that the cables are smaller. that is really the only good thing that i see from it. it would make the cases a lot cleaner looking. but since i have rounded ide cables, i don't see any use for it anytime for me, at least not until there is a big performance difference. that is my take on it. btw, good point with the usb. it takes a while before everybody starts making it actually mainstream. i remember it was the same thing with stuff like cd players. remember the mini disc players? they still haven't caught on at all... maybe some of this stuff never will... it's just a creative way to keep people buying new stuff constantly... a company can have a hot product but that product will only be hot for so long until someone comes along and makes something that is bigger and better than before.

to answer oc456 question:
in Japan
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148482

to be exact
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20021214/ni_i_hd.html#6y120m0

Wow...except there is one problem with that analogy--that was six to eight years ago. This is 2002, almost 2003 and new technology typically does not take long to introduce to the market. I'm not sure what is taking S-ATA so long, but Seagate should release its Barracuda 7200.7 Plus series out soon which should be better than the Maxtor's.

If you check seagates online store you can buy a True S. ATA 80G 8MB Cache today for $136.00USD + Shipping but there is a catch it's supposedly out of stock. They promised this a few months ago & I too was waiting for them but they seem to be giving the OEMs first pick or they have not successfuly mass produced them.

I've been watching that page at the Seagate store to see when they get "in stock". But I don't think the problem is in producing the drives, there's nothing about a S-ATA drive that would be even marginally more difficult to produce than a parallel model.

I suspect the problem in getting S-ATA drives to market is an abundance of parallel drives waiting for buyers. Like the case with the new Athlon and P4 chips, I think the drive makers are waiting for all of the old stock to be sold before they are switching to the good stuff.


BHD

GooGobbler said:

Wow...except there is one problem with that analogy--that was six to eight years ago. This is 2002, almost 2003 and new technology typically does not take long to introduce to the market.

Click to expand...

Wanna bet? The delay in getting USB peripherals wasn't a technical problem. Companies like Logitech and even Microsoft didn't bring out USB peripherals until the installed base of computers with USB ports meant there was a likely market.

New technology gets to market as fast as there is a buyer willing to pay for it. That was true with USB, and its true with S-ATA. If Michael Dell calls Seagate and says he's going to promote the hell out of S-ATA if he can get the drives, the drives will start coming off the assembly line right now. Without that kind of market demand, Seagate (and the rest) will switch to S-ATA only when it makes sense for them.


BHD

Please read: http://www.storagesearch.com/serialata.html

See the companies? Ah...there you go =)

Go read some of the articles while you are at it also.

We really need an avitar for pounding your head against a wall.

This isn't about technology and white papers, and its definitely not about PR department hype plastered onto a website. This is about dollars and cents. S-ATA will not become mainstream until it makes money for someone, or at least until staying with parallel drives costs more.

It will cost the drive manufacturers money to shift production lines to S-ATA drives. It will cost the major computer makers money to revise the specs for their boards, to revamp their supply lines, to retool this station on their assembly lines and to incorporate the changes to their documented procedures and retrain their production workers. None of this is a huge expense, but its an added cost at a time when only Dell is profitable.

I say again, unless you have a market willing to pay for this, all involved will stick with what they have now for as long as they can. Since parallel drives are going to remain in production for years, and since even after switching to S-ATA HDD's the computer makers are still going to use parallel cables for their optical drives, the only reason for the majors to change is if customers are willing to pay a premium for it. So far that hasn't happened and that's why we aren't seeing S-ATA hard drives at our local computer stores.

Technology is great, but never forget that accountants rule the world.


BHD

s-ata drives are pointless right now b/c all they do is ALLOW for higher transfer rates, but our current drives can't even keep up with the current 133 standard. Also our PCI bus cannot keep up with the S-ATA standard. What's the point?

If i had a m/b with a ata100 interface and a Serial ata interface and both drives were available at the same price, I would tak the serial ATA because of the cabling. I would love nice small cables. But I dont see the point of buying a controller for a drive that wouldnt give anymore performance Increase. When I say Increase, I mean atleast 10% to 15% increase.

Evidently you cannot comprehend the fact that S-ATA hard disk drives are indeed very popular right now, which is why I suggested that you read the articles. Go look for a Barracuda V S-ATA and they are back ordered in the hundreds. Stop your futile hypothesizing and GO READ THE ARTICLES.

BaldHeadedDork said:

It will cost the drive manufacturers money to shift production lines to S-ATA drives.

Click to expand...

You see when you go about complaining like that with opposing ideas from your earlier posts in this thread you just sound like your b!tch!ng like a 14yr old or someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Cool off before you bust a vein.

FunkDaMonkMan said:

s-ata drives are pointless right now b/c all they do is ALLOW for higher transfer rates, but our current drives can't even keep up with the current 133 standard. Also our PCI bus cannot keep up with the S-ATA standard. What's the point?

Click to expand...

READ THIS then talk about why it is useless.

Very interesting Read, I will have to read into it more when I am fully awake.

Sonny said:

You see when you go about complaining like that with opposing ideas from your earlier posts in this thread you just sound like your b!tch!ng like a 14yr old or someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Cool off before you bust a vein.

Click to expand...

As opposed to something mature, like that?

Care to debate any of the facts? Take your pick. Show where S-ATA is proven to provide more than a negligible increase sustained data transfer speeds. Show where it won't cost money for drive makers, motherboard manufacturers or the major system vendors to intergrate S-ATA into their product lines. Show five people who don't hang out in places like this who know what S-ATA is or are willing to pay even ten cents extra for it.

And if you want to know why it is useless, try reading the article you linked to:

Currently, Seral ATA is still in the waste lands, there are still issues between controllers and different drive configurations, some of these issues appear reporting errors of the software used rather than real performance issues but overall, the new technology looks extremely impressive and promising. The results from HDTach are not exactly mind blowing, timing marginalities could play into those numbers as well as some other issues.

Click to expand...

In other words, it looks so good on paper that if it doesn't work, then the problem must be with the benchmarks and system configurations.

And notice how they curiously omitted real world large file transfer testing? There isn't a reputable hardware test site on the web that will judge the performance of a hard drive just off an artificial benchmark. Throw it a 1.5GB MPEG file and time how long it takes to move it. That is where the rubber meets the road.

And thanks for being concerned about my health, but I'm not going to have a stroke over a rant by a fanboy.


BHD

Sonny said:

READ THIS then talk about why it is useless.

Click to expand...

thanks for the interesting read on sata. i didn't know anything compared to what they article had in it. i think i'll have to bookmark that one.

BaldHeadedDork said:

LMAO!

Windows 95-OSR2 was the first OS with USB support.

BHD

Click to expand...

Win95 plub and play compatable....

LOL!

GooGobbler said:

Evidently you cannot comprehend the fact that S-ATA hard disk drives are indeed very popular right now, which is why I suggested that you read the articles. Go look for a Barracuda V S-ATA and they are back ordered in the hundreds. Stop your futile hypothesizing and GO READ THE ARTICLES.

Click to expand...

From Storage Search:

Well, the recovery came, if you believe the economic data, but this didn't mark the end of storage company woes. When I looked at the financial results of the top 1,000 storage companies for my May article the fastest growing profitable STORAGE companies in the US - I found it difficult to find many companies which were actually making money, so the choice was limited. And I concluded that because of competitive pressure, storage prices in most cases were reflecting the aspirations of companies to grow market share rather than achieve profitability. I commented that for many vendors in the storage industry the recovery could be as bad as the recession. (Emphasis mine.)

Click to expand...

Is this the article you were talking about?

I'll accept your claim that hundreds of S-ATA Barracuda V drives are on preorder with Seagate. Do you have any idea what a miniscule fraction of the drive market that represents? Best Buy alone will sell hundreds retail-box drives every week. When Seagate gets an order from Dell, each lot represents a thousand drives and Seagate depends on getting those orders every day.

Look, I'm not against S-ATA. I don't care about it one way or the other. But if you think a few hundred people preordering one drive will move the market, you simply do not understand the business side of personal computing. When the drive companies are struggling to stay profitable and cutting prices to buy market share-as your source reports-they will be slow to introduce any new technology that cannot pay for itself from day one. The major system vendors have to get onboard, and when they are bleeding cash the same rule about having a market willing to pay for it will apply.

Hey, here's a thought: If I'm so wrong-you tell me why its taking so long for Seagate (and the rest) to begin making these drives? Have at it, ace.


BHD