Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
BluRay Drive in a PPC?
- Thread starter MatthewLTL
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
SAS - Serial Attached SCSI.
Uses the SCSI control set over a standard SATA plug. I've only ever seen the controllers in big iron servers. Possibly also fitted to top end workstations like the Mac Pro/HP Z-series that utilise server chipsets.
The nearest we got to a straight replacement for SCSI as a general purpose bus was Firewire. Oddly that's what Apple intended when they initiated the project.
but ide tho dead still common the time when needing to find a ide drive becomes scarce won't be for years. SATA drives in my career and experience have a much higher fail rate than IDE Drives I have only had 1 IDE drive fail however i have had atleast a dozen SATA drives fail
New unused stock IDE drives are virtually impossible to find - I stated above that our suppliers couldn't provide them in the correct capacity six years ago. Hard Drives are mechanical - they wear out. Used drives are a lottery.
Find all the eBay auctions you like, they don't count as reputable suppliers.
Right, I'm going to bed.
if you can get a SATA to IDE adapter and vice versa than how come a SCSI to IDE and vice versa adapter were never made?
New, unused PATA drives are starting to become hard to find. It's already nearly impossible to find new ones in 500GB and 750GB sizes. If you've seen more SATA drive failures than PATA drives in your career, then either you're looking at the wrong numbers or your career isn't very broad. PATA drives are starting to drop dead like fruit flies. Only last month did the Xserve XRAID where I work need three drives replaced in one month. That's the highest failure rate per month we've ever had for it over its ten year life.
PATA/SCSI adapters do exist, but they are very expensive because of the differences between the two protocols.
SAS - Serial Attached SCSI.
Uses the SCSI control set over a standard SATA plug. I've only ever seen the controllers in big iron servers. Possbily fitted to top end workstations like the Mac Pro/HP Z-series that utilise server chipsets.
The nearest we got to a straight replacement for SCSI as a general purpose bus was Firewire. Oddly that's what Apple intended when they initiated the project.
Some dumpster diving a while back yielded me a bunch of IBM 3U rackmount servers. They actually weren't terribly outdated-most had twin dual core Xeons, and some even had twin quad cores(although older architecture and not anything up to date). They all have six hot-swap drive bays on the front that can take either a SATA or SAS drive. I also picked up a BIG pile of 15K RPM SAS drives(mixed 80gb and 140gb) in sleds.
I set one up as a file server with 6 of the 140gb drives in Raid 5, and it was FAST(actual benchmarked write speed of 3.5gb/s). Unfortunately, it also made the power company very happy, so that didn't last too long in that role. It does give me a big grin to plug in both power supplies(redundant and hot-swappable) and power it up to hear all 14 fans kick in at full blast for a few seconds. I'd still like to Hackintosh one of them, as the processors in it are actually the same part number as one of the available Mac Pro options from 2008 or so(I think).
____________________________________________________________________________________
BTW, regarding IDE hard drives-I've seen more than I care to count, and comparatively few dead SATA drives. It's probably because the only SATA desktops I own are my G5s(although I've had a bunch of SATA based laptops-the ones in use are slowly being migrated to SSDs).
I bought some refurbished 160gb WD IDE hard drives for $14 last month at Microcenter in Cincinatti. They had 80gb drives for $8. Their refurbished SATA drives were about the same price. I don't know what they actually consider "refurbishing", as they didn't reset the SMART status-the one I've opened and used sowed about 60,000 hours of on time right out of the package.
Last edited:
True Dat. biggest ATA drive i can find is 320GB Which for me is fine because of that i do. However the drives ive had fail are:
Maxtor Diamond Max 6 IDE HDD 40GB
Seagate SATA I 320GB x3 and a 500GB (all actually just need new PCBs)
WDC Black 500GB SATA II (Dropped Dead; Doesn't even spin up)
Hitachi TravelStar 80GB SATA I laptop HDD (Bad sectors to the point of catastrphics failure (Went up in smoke literally)
Western digital 80GB SATA HDD (same as above minus the smoke)
Samsung 20GB SATA HDD (same as the other two but still works just cannot hold a OS anymore) however i still have more IDE HDDs than SATA HDDs mostly 40GB
oh i also have a Seagate 80GB SATA (from atformentioned PDS Vector GZ) that went up in smoke too the controller chip on the Drive's PCB fried
----------
what are the differences between SCSI, IDE, SATA and SAS (besides the visual differences) i mean in the technoligies
Many times the failures of an electronic component can be plotted on what's sometimes called a "bathtub curve."
Basically, if something is going to fail, it has a decent likelihood of occurring out of the box or very shortly after being put into use. After a point, the failure rates drop off dramatically, and remain relatively low up to a point where they again rise exponentially.
Almost all 50 pin SCSI drives in circulation are at the tail end of the "bathtub curve." I've paid decent amounts of money for relatively small drives(i.e. $30 or so for 500mb) only to have them fail within a few hours of my use. Not too long ago, I was given a big stash(about 20) of new, never used 80 pin 9gb SCSI drives, and now use those in preference to sourcing 50 pin drives wherever possible just because I can be pretty much assured that they will work. A simple 80 pin to 50 pin adapter takes care of them.
I don't know exactly when production stopped on IDE drives, but it's been at least a couple of years. The newest I personally own is dated Feb. 2011-I've heard a date sometime in 2012 tossed around. In any case, most of them are a LOT older than this, as desktop IDE drives for new installations were pretty much gone by the end of the P4 era. As time goes on, more and more IDE drives are going to start approaching the tail end of the "bathtub curve" and we are going to start seeing more failures. It's just a fact of life.
Basically, if something is going to fail, it has a decent likelihood of occurring out of the box or very shortly after being put into use. After a point, the failure rates drop off dramatically, and remain relatively low up to a point where they again rise exponentially.
Almost all 50 pin SCSI drives in circulation are at the tail end of the "bathtub curve." I've paid decent amounts of money for relatively small drives(i.e. $30 or so for 500mb) only to have them fail within a few hours of my use. Not too long ago, I was given a big stash(about 20) of new, never used 80 pin 9gb SCSI drives, and now use those in preference to sourcing 50 pin drives wherever possible just because I can be pretty much assured that they will work. A simple 80 pin to 50 pin adapter takes care of them.
I don't know exactly when production stopped on IDE drives, but it's been at least a couple of years. The newest I personally own is dated Feb. 2011-I've heard a date sometime in 2012 tossed around. In any case, most of them are a LOT older than this, as desktop IDE drives for new installations were pretty much gone by the end of the P4 era. As time goes on, more and more IDE drives are going to start approaching the tail end of the "bathtub curve" and we are going to start seeing more failures. It's just a fact of life.
I suggest doing research upon those subjects. They're too vast to fit within MacRumors post limitations.
That's about the size of it. There's also 68 pin.
And a ton of information out there in the interwebz about the subject-the 68 and 80 pin drives I have came out of or were intended for use in workstations from about 2000. The new 80 pin drives I have were kept on hand as spares that were never used.
----------
Not at all
No. Very very different.
Intell summed it up perfectly before in two separate posts :