From: PLM <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 09:10:28 -0400
Hey Listers, Anyone out there using the "New" Serial ATA cards and Hard Drives with there Supermacs?
don't know much about them, any thoughts...Phillip
Phillip, I'd been wanting to ask this question myself!
There's not a lot of info and I don't know of any UMAX person using one yet. Here's what I've been able to gather so far. Barefeats has a test review between a SATA drive hooked to a Firmtek card and an ATA drive hooked to Acard ATA 133 card. They used a fast Maxtor drive that was the same basic model except for connector types. While the SATA was a bit faster in general they were close in speed etc. Used in the Raid mode the SATA was the clear winner. Just as in the past no hard drive comes close to using the full output of the ATA let alone the 150mb/sec of the SATA.
I have found in testing that our old machines seem limited to apox 32 -35 mb/sec depending on the hard drive used rather then the adapter used. My Acard/Sonnet ATA 66 card is more then fast enough for todays hard drives in our older machines. A raid version of the cards which involves using two matching drives together or UW SCSI seems the only way to get more real speed from our machines. However I'm pretty happy with the speed I get from the ATA 66 card and IDE drives.
The Firm Tek SATA card is the first card sold with that brand name. However they have been the force behind the firmware for the VST and so called Promise cards sold under the Sonnet name. models ATA/ 100/133 and trio cards. The Sonnet 133 raid card just to confuse us is an Acard. Statements on the Firm tek site lead me to think the so called Promise cards are really made by Firm Tek.
Possible Pros of the SATA card perhaps more speed in the future when faster hard drives become available. Cards are selling for $68.00 apox at both the newly re-opened Macgurus.com site and OWC. Which is apox $10.00 less then the ATA cards. But the SATA hard drives are currently a bit more. The good news is with a really small $25.00 adapter you can use a regular ATA drive or ide CDRW /DVDRW drive ! So with the SATA card you also miss out on the 8 gb limit in OSX on an ATA/ide bus just like the Acard ATA cards and I believe the advantage of most IDe CDRW and DVD drives working as with the Promise/Sonnet cards. SATA also uses a small 7 pin cable which is a bit like a firewire cable and can be as long as 39 inches!
Possible cons the drives are a bit more money at least now and you can only use 2 drives with a card rather then 4 with the ATA cards.
I'd like to give it a try but have endless lists of other things to buy :-(
later Will S
PS. In fact my trusty Apple studio Display 17 in (non flat panel )monitor died yesterday. So while I'm lucky to have a 15 inch backup it's killing my eyes!
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