On Jan 24, 2011, at 7:17 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote:
To be clear, you're talking PATA in the external FW enclosure, correct?
No. It doesn't make any difference. It can be SATA I, SATA II, PATA133, or PATA150 . They're all going to be roughly the same speed as single HDs. A newer 7,200 RPM PATA HD is generally going to be a faster HD than any 5,400 RPM SATA HD. We're talking about SINGLE HDs, not RAID HDs. For normal SINGLE HD setups, it's the rotational speed and the latency of the HD that are important, NOT the connection speed to the computer. The only exception would be for extremely old, slow connections like USB 1.1 or older SCSI. For modern ATA, SATA, eSATA, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FW400, FW800, FW1600, or FW3200 with a SINGLE HD there's not going to be much noticeable difference in performance for the user. The factor with the single greatest influence will be the HD itself. Its rotational speed is directly proportional to its latency.
I learned this THE HARD WAY, I actually BOUGHT FW800 enclosures expecting them to be TWICE AS FAST as my old FW400 enclosures, but when I TESTED THEM, they were the SAME SPEED, not because they're not CAPABLE of twice as fast, but because you'd need a RAID of multiple HDs to saturate the connection. This whole 1.5 Gbps or 3.0 Gbps thing for individual HDs is 100% hype. No single HD can sustain anything near that rate. Mechanical LATENCY is the reason. It doesn't matter how fast the electronics can move bits when the mechanical parts can't move equally as fast. HD RPM is one direct method to lower latency. Like Dan said, it's the WAIT cycles that are the killer here, not the speed of the connection. To quote Dan, "A faster rotational speed = shorter latency = shorter wait times = higher performance." The connection speed isn't important, it's NOT THE LIMITING FACTOR for a single modern HDs.
Sorry for being so "hostile" today. I don't like "guessing" about facts. I don't like using advertising hype as a substitute for reality. I'm a little frustrated and my patience is thin. Too much snow, too much cold, too much cabin fever.
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