SATA, ULTRA, IDE, 133, 100?? tutorial please?

I should know all this by now but there are holes in my knowledgebase.
Would like a tutorial on differences, interactions, and contollers needed to run the differing types of hard drives / drives.
Thanks and Blessings,
Port-O-San

 

I can give you the basics, but I'm still learning myself. It's a life long process it seems.

SATA Serial ATA, uses a serial cable instead of the wire ribbon older drives use.

PATA, aka IDE uses a wire ribbon. Still the main interface for CDs of all types as far as I know. The original speed of IDE was 33, but it has slowly progressed to faster speeds, like 66, 100, 133. So ATA 133 is a speed measurement as well as the interface type. 100 and 133 use a slightly different cable, although they can use the older versions too, the newer cables support the speedups.

Whenever two drives are connected to an IDE cable (you can have up to 2 drives) the slowest drive sets the speed of that line. This is why it is not a good idea to have your CD (which is usually slow) on the same IDE port as the hard drive, although it is done all the time. It really slows down the hard drive though.

Most newer motherboards, if they are not SATA, have 2 separate IDE ports, each capable of supporting 2 drives each.

 

Thanks a ton, Bill - those basics will help me alot!
Would also like to know when (if there is a when) SATA became the standard (if it actually has). And what is difference between an SATA controller and an SATA RAID controller..........????? When would I need RAID, and what IS it?

 

I think S-ATA is now the defacto standard. P-ATA will still be supported, but as time passes you'll see it reduced to a single channel and many motherboards, just won't have it. Do you remember 8-bit and 16-bit ISA card slots? They've been relegated to archival history. P-ATA will soon follow.
The SATA controller is just a standard controller - nothing fancy.
RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk Drives. The SATA RAID contoller allows you to use identical drives in a redundancy array. This means that data may be spread across several drives so that in the event that a single drive fails, the RAID controller can rebuild the drive set without any loss of data. It works well, and drives may be configured as a 'Mirror Image', where the entire system is cloned to a second drive set. Alternatively, you may create a 'Stripe' set where the data is spread over all the drives, using an elaborate error-checking system, not too disimilar to the error-checking on a CD/DVD rom drive. With the stripe set, all the drives are in use as data drives, but with the mirror set, you use obviously half of the drives, the other half is the mirror image.

 

Many thanks, Promethios! Between you and Bill, my level of understanding just increased tenfold.
Blessings,
Port-O-San

 

Glad to help - Port - O - San.