Partnering up with AMD, on Monday Seagate announced the latest Serial ATA specification: SATA3. The new specification offers hard drive transfer speeds of up to 6Gbps, which is around 600MBps.This new specification was developed by the Serial ATA International Organization, in order to provide a hefty upgrade from today's SATA2 specification. So just how much of an upgrade is it? Your average SATA2 drive today can offer hard drive transfer speeds of up to 3Gbps, which is roughly 300MBps, so in theory SATA3 will be twice as fast. As CNET notes, it's important to know that software and hardware holds back these speeds, so in reality they're about 100MBps less than they could be. Never-the-less, this will leave you with a hard drive that can transfer 500MBps, and that's not something to laugh at.
Most importantly, the newly developed interface will be backwards-compatible with all previous SATA standards, so you won't have to upgrade cables or connectors; this will save consumers a nice bit of cash when they're deciding to upgrade (when SATA3 is released, of course). SATA3 brings with it better power management and native command queuing, which will generally increase system performance.
Seagate is apparently in the last stages of development of a SATA3 hard drive, and you can expect one by the end of this year. Additionally, AMD will fully support the new standard with its current 750 chipset and all future chipsets.
Did you see that article on Engadget/Gizmodo (or both) that showed off a whole bunch of RAIDed SSDs? They had massive speed...opened all of Microsoft Office in half a second :p It's madness. Do want.
YES! It's weird, none of the hard drive makers (Seagate, WD, Maxtor)
are releasing SSDs. You'd think they'd be all about it since it's you know... the future of storage.
I agree, what I find funny is the main-stream manufacturers have nothing to offer. I wonder when Western Digital will have an SSD for sale?
are releasing SSDs. You'd think they'd be all about it since it's you know... the future of storage.
I would guess this is because of the vast difference in producing HDDs and SSDs. They would have to completely change their manufacturing lines.
haha.. 500MBps! Don't hold your breath people. That speed is the interface bandwidth, not the actual real read/write speed. SATA2 has theoretical bandwidth of 300MB/s, yet no drive on the market can manage that. Fastest are around 120-140MB/s.. and those drives cost $$$ and spin at 15k RPM.
If you read it again, the theoretical maximum isn't 500... its 800.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
And if you read it again I nowhere said 500 was the theoretical speed. And if you wish to nitpick, then it's 600, not 800. 6Gbps is 600MBps. SATA interface uses 10bits to encode 8bits. So 6Gb is actually 600MB in SATA terms, nowhere near 800.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
6Gbps is 600MBps.
No it's not. 6Gbps is 715 MBps.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
6Gbps is 600MBps.
No it's not. 6Gbps is 715 MBps.
Sigh.. -_-
http://www.villagegeek.com/Archives/WhatsNew/SATAII_6-06.htm
SATA 6Gbits/s
6000MHz embedded clock
x 1 bit per clock
x 80% for 8b10b encoding
/ 8 bits per byte
= 600 MBytes/sec
6000 * 0.80 / 8 = 600MBytes/s
I should also point out that it should be Gibits and MiBytes, but nobody really uses that terminology anyway.
If you re-read it again you said 500 is the interface bandwidth which is the theoretical speed.
Thanks Glendi. That's exactly what I was reffering to.
I swear .... i am never buying a Seagate ever and wont even recommend it. They just handled the problem unprofessionally with delay of firmware, wrong untested firmware updates etc and all that crap i experienced is probably the biggest bad experience i ever had.
Any, yes any Hard Drive can fail and if you have no backups then that's self inflicted. Next time plan how you will back up the data then you won't have a problem.
My comment is no way related to this article but it simply wants to state, just dont buy SATA 3 hdd as soon as its released.. Remember all the 1TB hdd issues on seagate forums.. Give it a while and buy if you feel its worth it but i for sure wont ever be buying a seagate ever
I certainly wouldn't randomly update the firmware without backups (which everyone knows is risky).
I swear .... i am never buying a Seagate ever and wont even recommend it. They just handled the problem unprofessionally with delay of firmware, wrong untested firmware updates etc and all that crap i experienced is probably the biggest bad experience i ever had.
I agree with you. I too will never buy a Seagate. However, I learned long ago with a 80 MB (yes, MB) drive.
Don't let people hammer on you about not having a backup. You bought brand new drives, they failed. That's like me buying a new car, having it break down and having people say, "you should have bought a backup car."
FWIW, hope you never lose your data again.
You always have to consider the costs of backing up the data. No data storage is fool proof.
They're called courtesy cars, and if you don't get one, you should have bought better breakdown cover.
If you choose not to backup, then that's your problem. Sure the HDD manufacturer is to blame for the hardware failure, but they'll replace the hardware, you put the software on it, therefore the burden is yours alone to keep a backup system.
Do you think major corporations are allowed to just blame the HDD manufacturer when they lose a few TB of data? Damn right they're not.
I do have that coverage; my Prelude only gets the best! :-P
ROFL! That made me laugh, thanks.
"Your average SATA2 drive today can offer hard drive transfer speeds of up to 3Gbps, which is roughly 300MBps, so in theory SATA3 will be twice as fast."
The current SATA 3Gbps spec is the theoretical speed for the SATA bandwidth. It says nothing for device speeds. You'll likely see around 100MB/s if you're lucky out of a decent low-platter count drive. Nowhere near 300MBps.
"Never-the-less, this will leave you with a hard drive that can transfer 500MBps, and that's not something to laugh at."
Again, the increased 6Gbps spec is for theoretical bandwidth. Rotational hard-drives won't realise anything near this, and will continue to operate around the 100MB/s region. The increase in the bandwidth is good because of the increasing speed of SSDs. The SATA spec upgrades really don't apply to hard-drives at all.
Next we'll see SATA4 at 1000MBps yet we'll still be running hard drives at 100 MBps and SSDs at 300 MBps.
What is with these people constantly updating the interface when there is no hardware in existance to make use of it?
What is with these people constantly updating the interface when there is no hardware in existance to make use of it?
Because of the time it takes to develop something faster (like the interface) vs time for speed increase of the drive.. If they stopped development for two years, the drives would be 2-4 times their speed, but no interface to use it.
With things like the OCZ Z-Drive with a ACTUAL throughput of 5-600MBps (yes, LARGE B), they had to utilize the PCIe bus to get over the bottleneck of SATA. This one can at least use SATA3
FisionIO's ioDrive can do 770MBps (yes, large B http://www.fusionio.com/PDFs/Medusa%20report.pdf). It will have to stick with the PCIe bus because SATA3 will be the bottleneck.
It's only a matter of time...
There is a reason why the fastest SSDs are only around 250 MBps. As I said, aside from some rare and expensive special equipment, hardware will be nowhere near the capacities that SATA keeps increasing every couple years.
Last edited by ElementZero on 10 Mar 2009 - 06:39
I thought you were a mac girl..
afusionTM
Well, I sure as heck would not use a Seagate drive. WD or Samsung. ;-)
afusionTM
I am, primarily, but I have other computers knocking around for various things. Geekiness > Mac loyalty.
True, but since the SSD doesn't have that problem....
Right...but even SSDs aren't that fast yet. They should be, but they aren't. Unless you are talking about out-of-consumer hands stuff. Like the stuff the military puts on jets.
For example, just imagine using Vista on a IDE HDD with Core 2 Duo and 4 gigs of ram. Would it give any better performance ? No.
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