I think SATA is a waste of time.

They could have made the SATA controller look like an IDE controller, so every O/S would work just fine, out of the box. But NO..... they make it look like a SCSI controller, you you have to press F6 and insert a floppy/CD with the driver.

But SATA doesn't do the drastic CPU load reduction which SCSI gives you; it is just like IDE actually. So you can get a situation where you have a 3GHz CPU, a SATA HD, and be writing a CD on a CD writer, and when somebody on the LAN prints to an inkjet attached to your PC, the CD writing fails spectacularly. OTOH, you could have a 200MHz CPU, a SCSI HD, a SCSI CD writer, and no matter how you load it up, it won't fall over.

SATA just looks better on paper but for single user situations there isn't any point because the HD can't deliver the data fast enough, and the SATA controller doesn't do the queue reordering, posted writes, etc.

IO540,

The whole idea of SATA was that is was a cheaper solution for future technology. Still it is much cheaper than SCSI. Also it is a smaller form factor which helps inside cases for airflow and as well as for computer footprints that keep shrinking.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. SATA with WD Raptors is a sweet combination. :cool: