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peter2002

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 1, 2002
253
1
Dallas, TX
Here is some great tech news. Western Digital will debut the first "consumer" 10,000 RPM hard drive next week on Feb. 11. "10K" drives have been around for about 5 years, but SCSI only. This new drive uses the new Serial-ATA 150 interface.

It will be nice when Apple upgrades to Serial ATA. If I'm not mistaken, you can still use this new drive in an Apple's ATA 100 interface. Serial-ATA 150 is backwardly compatible. We will have to wait and see.

The main advantage to Serial-ATA is power since it uses 3V whereas regular ata always uses 5V. However, the higher bandwidth of 150 megs a second of Serial-ATA is mute since no HD can achieve more than about 50 megs a second.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7636
 
Serial ATA isn't going to appear on the mac anytime soon I think.

both the power and interface connectors are different from anything Macs use at present. I don't understand the logic in changing to a non standard power connector but the actual Serial ATA interface appears to be only 2 cables.

I found this site with some info about it.

The photo shows Serial ATA connectors to the left and normal ATA connectors to the right.

:mad:
 

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The reason for the new cables is evident in the pictures. Small & Fast Serial Vs. Big & Slow Parallel. .093 Pins are overkill.
 
when and what cost

i was wondering why my thread did not take we both have the same headline.
 
Originally posted by LethalWolfe


What does it matter? Current drives can't max out ATA66 anyway.


Lethal
sure they can, search some tests on web and you will see.
especialy if disks are on the same ata bus.
 
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