Is a Sata harddrive faster than an IDE drive?

[Spongebob]

Is thers a noticable speed difference in a Sata harddrive of the same make and size compared with its IDE twin?

[intellover]

Yes, most definitely. Sata is substantially faster than IDE. Simply because Sata transfers data serially.

[Amd_Lover2004]

Dont forget the 8 and sometimes 16 MB cache compaired to the normal 2Mb on ost IDE drives, some IDE's come with 8 though.

[KoolDrew]

Also don't forget about the SATA 2 line

[Mutineer]

Originally Posted by intellover

Yes, most definitely. Sata is substantially faster than IDE. Simply because Sata transfers data serially.

What a load of crap... Do you even know the difference between serial and parallel communication?!?

Current range SATA drives don't perform that much better than their IDE counterparts. The next generation of SATA (SATA2) should perform better, but at the moment there's not a lot of difference.

[Yawgm0th]

Exactly. There is some performance increase going form an 8MB cache 7200 RPM IDE to a SATA of the same specs, but it's no greater than the difference between FAT32 and NTFS (in fact, it's less), and very few people running SATA will be using Windows 9x or need access to FAT32 partitions for something such as dual-booting. And that's a free speed increase (with some arguably major loses), as opposed to going SATA, which costs more money than IDE.

The 10000RPM Raptors and 16MB cache Maxtors are the exceptions, where the performance difference can often be noticable, though anyone with a budget and a need for an upgrade\replacement\new system would still likely go for cheaper options.

But forgetting all that crap and repeating myself, the answer to the question is no, the speed difference between SATA and an IDE drive of the same size\speed\cache is not noticable.

[Spongebob]

More questions....
Can say, 1 internal Sata and 1 internal IDE harddrive be used on the same mainboard\system? If so does the Sata drive slow down to the IDE's speed or doesn't that have any effect on the Sata drive? Or in another setup, would a 7200 RPm Sata slow a 10000 Ppm Sata down being used on the same system?

[Darthtanion]

As long as the mainboard has support for both types of drive, yes they can be used together. Neither will have any effect on the speed of the other as the controllers do not work in conjuction with each other.

[DigitalDemolition]

Serial ATA - or simply SATA - is the hard disk standard created to replace the parallel ATA interface, a.k.a. IDE. SATA provides a transfer rate of 150 MB/s or 300 MB/s against of a 133 MB/s maximum using the previous technology.

and for you people lucky enough to own a intel sata/raid enabled board

Intel Application Accelerator
Description: The Intel Application Accelerator software
package provides high-performance Serial ATA and. Serial SATA

there is also a intel ide application accelerator for intel ide enabled motherboards also, including auto acoustic management and what have you .