Current SATA drives are not faster, which is confirmed by all reviews you
could found.  but SATA does offer very nice features, and become more and
more popular.  One thing you have to watch for, is that windows see SATA as
SCSI device and, therefore, install windows on SATA should follow same
procedure as you install on SCSI or RAID controller.  The downside is that
you have more chances to corrupt windows, if something goes wrong.  So far
the worst I have to deal with, was that customer corrupted SATA drivers, and
the whole contains on system drive gone crazy, to a point where there was no
return but had to do a fresh install of XP.

I highly recommend SATA drives for their features, but for your safety, it
is best to have system drive/partition on ATA drive, and leave SATA for data
and applications.  Intel 875 chipset has build-in SATA controller, and can
be set as "native", which is a good direction, but there is no native
support by OSes, so at this moment, I'd say it is better to have more
cautions than troubles.

Jun Qian


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 2:44 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Serial ATA drives


> SATA hard drives seem to be the current flavour of the month - does any
have
> any experience with the product?  Are they significantly (ie, noticeably)
> faster?  Or is it just marketing hype?
>

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