[Klug-general] Hard Drives

[Peter Childs]

On 17 April 2011 11:26, James Blake <jimmyblake at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Peter
> I guess the answer, as always, is that it depends what you're trying to do.
> First SATA vs PATA:
>
> PATA: with ATA-4 33 Mbps / with ATA-6 100 Mbps
> SATA: 1.5 Gbps
> SATA II: 3 Gbps
>
> So SATA is a no brainer.  Now lets no SATA vs USB:

Don't you mean PATA.

Except the machine upstairs with only a 40Gb PATA drive does not have
SATA sockets..... But otherwise PATA is legacy hardware as is most
defiantly a no brainier unless you have no other option......

>
> USB 1.1: 12 Mbps
> USB 2.0: 480 Mbps
>
> You'll still be constrained by the drive electronics in the enclosure as
> well, so internal SATA is a no brainer for transfer speed.  If you need to
> swap the drive between two machines get SATA toaster docks on both machines
> that connect to your machine's internal or external SATA interface and you
> simply plop the drive in - full SATA speed with USB-drive portability.
> NAS over Gigabit Ethernet:

So the only advanage really of USB is that its portable, So long as
your using USB 2 (or even 3) which is somtimes difficult to check, you
should not notice the speed degrade, its still 4x faster than PATA!
(so long as its not using a PATA disk inside, which I suspect may
happern on older machines).

>
> 1 Gbps (theoretical)
>
> Again, you'll still be constrained by the drive electronics in the enclosure
> as well.  I've got a couple of Drobo's here - great for redundancy and
> multi-protocol sharing (through the DroboShare, but nothing you can't do
> with internal SATA drives and in a Linux box.
> James

I did a bit of reading up on NAS and it goes a bit like this......

SATA or SCSI Hard Disk..... -> OS (Probably a streamlined version of
BSD, Linux or somthing else) -> Samba, NFSd, FTPd etc -> Network -> OS
of Client...

Hence it will cost you around £100 for an extra specilist device and
adds and extra layer of processing, hence 1Gb just ain't going to
happen, infact I suspect you'll be lucky to see 100Mbit/s even on
1Gbit/s Ethernet......

The other thing to watch is 1GBs = 8Gbs  and the terms get mixed up
all the time and give most people a head ache.

I'm still trying to work out how big to go as big is usually cheaper
in terms of £ per a Gig (untill it gets very very very big) but when
does speed and reliability stop it from being worth going any bigger.

Peter.

>
> On 17 Apr 2011, at 10:39, Peter Childs wrote:
>
> My Linux Hard Disk has just failed..... Groan, not very much data
> except OS on it so that will be easy to sort out...... (Looks like its
> the Disk Controller thats failed not the disk as it works when it
> feels like it) Its a SATA.....
>
> Now need to get a new one, Whats the best way to go.
>
> Speed Vs Size Vs Cost Vs Reliability....
>
> meaning
>
> SATA Vs PATA Vs USB Vs NAS
>
> Also need to upgrade that machine upstairs running Myth on a 40Gig
> Disk which only takes PATA (Not SATA)
>
> Any suggestions which way to go?
>
> Peter.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kent mailing list
> Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kent mailing list
> Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
>