# Sata III HDD's still a gimmick???



## FreedomEclipse (Oct 6, 2011)

Ive been told that going from Sata II to Sata III with hard drives is a waste of time.

However, more and more Sata III hard drives are appearing on the market. and im wondering If hard drives are still struggling to make use of all that bandwidth.

If i dont get a new SSD to use as boot drive, then I will most likely get one of these....

WD 750GB 3.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Caviar Black Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache

Seagate 1TB 3.5" Barracuda SATA-III 6Gb/s Hard Drive - 7200RPM 32MB Cache

though Im leaning towards the WD more as it has 64mb cache which should improve performance a fair bit

Has anyone had any experience with Sata III hard drives? If possible id like to see some Atto runs if youd be kind enough to upload some.


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## Jegergrim (Oct 6, 2011)

I used the WD Caviar black 1TB with 64 MB cache, in my previous sold rig, it was pretty fast, much faster than the SATA 2 ones I previously used in my other rig, however keep in mind that this HDD makes noise, and lots of it. I also sent 1 of them back because they went faulty, and got a new one, which worked fine, and i set the AAM down to 128 from 256 and the noise levels were unhearable again


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 6, 2011)

Jegergrim said:


> I used the WD Caviar black 1TB with 64 MB cache, in my previous sold rig, it was pretty fast, much faster than the SATA 2 ones I previously used in my other rig, however keep in mind that this HDD makes noise, and lots of it. I also sent 1 of them back because they went faulty, and got a new one, which worked fine, and i set the AAM down to 128 from 256 and the noise levels were unhearable again



Thanks!

Any chance you can run an atto bench for me?

Id just like to have something solid to compare my drives against


:Edit:

bah, just realised you said you sold it.

Never mind then!!!


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## Jegergrim (Oct 6, 2011)

Hold on, i might have benchmarks from HD Tune pro from it ^^


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Oct 6, 2011)

hm maybe i should send my 1tb western digi back as windows was moaning about bad sectors 

if i were you i'd go with a slightly lower sized disk say some thing like a 640 gb, just my opinion

and yes as an avid emulator user (mainly gc and ps2) 6gb/s does make a difference, i can't wait to put the beast back together


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Oct 6, 2011)

btw fe when are you planning on getting one? just curious


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## Jegergrim (Oct 6, 2011)

This is from my drive when it was turning bad, but this is very good estimation of the actual performance, from new, it was slightly faster, but heres a benchmark


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 6, 2011)

Bah, Just seen a review for a WD Black Edition.

Guess, the drive being mechanical only holds it back.

I might as well get another Samsung F3 or save for a bigger SSD


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## Jegergrim (Oct 6, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Bah, Just seen a review for a WD Black Edition.
> 
> Guess, the drive being mechanical only holds it back.
> 
> I might as well get another Samsung F3 or save for a bigger SSD



I think SSD is pretty much the way to go now adays, if we want to free us from the mechanical disk shackles ;p


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 7, 2011)

yeah I dug a little deeper. Pitty I cant just ask a shop to give me one to review. Most of the reviews im picking up are from 2010.

there doesnt seem to be a huge amount of difference at all. probably about 20-30MB/s read/write. If theres no information saying that Sata III hard drives go beyond 110-120MB/s which seems to be the average then people probably didnt bother with Sata III hard drives otherwise they would have voiced their opinions more.

I could just grab a Silverstone HDDBOOST and a fast Sata III SSD and use it to boost my entire system and call it a day. It would be a lot cheaper like that too,


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 7, 2011)

if all there doing is 110-120mb.s average theres no point


Samsung F4 320gb can hit 140-150mb.s read and average around 110-115mb/s

F3 has an average around 110mb/s

maybe the 64mb of cache might help with small files etc which is what makes HDDs so damn slow

4k read writes being 1-5mb/s on an HDD vs 20-70mb/s on an SSD is where the difference is.

Sequential speeds dont really mean a whole lot.


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## mediasorcerer (Oct 7, 2011)

im sorry but thats not true from my experience,i have a wd 500g sata 6 gb hdrive and its quite fast,it has a windows wei of 5.9,thats not slow ,its a snappy drive even tho its a cheapie,of course you need a dedicated 6gb port but,yeh ,they are good ,really good,better than sata 2,much better in my op,it oni cost 45$ au,so im going for two in raid soon,with ssd for os,
mines quite fast and its oni got a 16mb cache,imagine with 64?


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 7, 2011)

uh your full of shit what you consider snappy and what i consider snappy are 2 very different things

if an HDD was good enough why do you think so many ppl use an SSD as a boot drive. then offload apps to a regular HDD

4k especially random read and writes are where older HDDs get bogged down this is usually what happens most of the time seldom are you actually sequentially reading or writing data.

a samsung F3 1tb is thereby the basic benchmark for hdd speeds and an OCZ vertex 3 is 68x faster then the samsung F3 at 4x speeds.
Samsung F3 1TB






OCZ Vertex 2 (older Sata II ssd)





OCZ Vertex 3 (120gb Sata III ssd)





it would also appear i gave the HDDs far better scores of the top of my head then they actually do in the real world lolz


The point being here hdds are not snappy, im running multiple hdds i can tell you none of them are snappy anytime you access an HDD your waiting for it more often then not, anytime your waiting for the drive to just spin up before accessing data is not snappy lol its like listening to an old man grunt when he gets out of his favorite chair,

and raid does help but even then the 4k speeds dont magically get better you get 1mb/s

you do realize even if raid 0  4-6-9 SCSI 15k RPM drives they still get there asses kicked my a single SSD adding a second ssd well that just makes it that much worse for the hdds. when the fastest HDDS in the world need raid 0 with 4 or more drives just to equal parity in the sequential read write arena. thats pretty sad especialy since there still failing to beat a single SSD in the areas that matter most.


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## mediasorcerer (Oct 7, 2011)

im saying its snappier than sata 2-hdrives[not ssd,s],thats my experience,and it is faster,i didnt say it was "ssd" fast,of course not,but the one im using,feels faster than the sata 2 i had up until recently,yeh,its a subjective assesment,and maybe the numbers dont account for "snappy",but when i compare it to the sata 2 i had,[which was a more expensive hdrive too],of course theyre slower compared to ssd,anyway,your welcome to disagree,but the average user,meh,what are you talking,2 seconds compared to 5? not that much diff,not everyone has a craig supercomputer,lol,and i did say"in my opinion" but yeh,everyones an expert,and the moment you disagree,out come the guns,even if you phrase it,"in my opinion",no need to swear at me,is there?

so if youve got 6 gb bandwidth,then go and buy a sata2 harddrive for storage,when sata 3 is as cheap/cheaper-mine cost 45$-500gb,why would i buy sata 2 for storage? anyway,that doesnt makes sense,---haha,all good,im no expert,i never claimed to be,and i have got an ssd for the os,and using the hdrive/s for storage,cos 1000 gb of ssd would be more than my whole rigg!!even half that would hit over a k id imagine,


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## Widjaja (Oct 7, 2011)

The difference between a WD 1TB FALS and FAEX is nothing even though it is every so slightly faster fyi.

The old HDTune thread has my Sata II 1TB Black and someone elses Sata II 1TB WD with images of the average speeds.

Unless there have been new revisions which have significantly increased speeds since then, I'd say Sata II for HDDs is just evolution but not a vast improvement.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 7, 2011)

mediasorcerer said:


> so if youve got 6 gb bandwidth,then go and buy a sata2 harddrive for storage,when sata 3 is as cheap/cheaper-mine cost 45$-500gb,why would i buy sata 2 for storage?



Because theres not much difference in speed between Sata II and Sata III HDDs but some manufacturers charge more for it just because its Sata III.

With so much bandwidth. I was hoping Sata III HDDs were at least over the 200-300'ish read and write mark, but their mechanical parts let them down.


If SSDs were cheaper. i wouldnt be asking what peoples opinions were on Sata III HDDs and would have gone straight to an SSD.





Widjaja said:


> The difference between a WD 1TB FALS and FAEX is nothing even though it is every so slightly faster fyi.
> 
> The old HDTune thread has my Sata II 1TB Black and someone elses Sata II 1TB WD with images of the average speeds.
> 
> Unless there have been new revisions which have significantly increased speeds since then, I'd say Sata II for HDDs is just evolution but not a vast improvement.



we're talking about Sata III here not II


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## Tatty_One (Oct 7, 2011)

As I understand it, and to agree with what some have already said, maximum speeds currently acheivable by any standard HDD remain below the maximum SATA II throughput threashold.  When some say that one disk is faster than the other etc etc, those disks remain below the max SATA II throughput threashold.  There are too many factors that can effect overall speeds but the most important ones are platters (amount, lower = faster (usually)), cache amount and to a slightly lesser degree these days, but still relevant..... RPM.

The F3 1TB for example has 32MB cache, 7200RPM and two 500Gig platters, arguablly it is the fastest 1TB drive available (arguably), if you could get a 500GB single platter model with all other specs identical it would probably be a little faster (lower seek times).

Perhaps the SATA III versions are there as a sales gimmick as those with a SATA III capable board may be more likely to purchase them or of course, not sure if running 2 drives in Raid 0 would increase the throughput above SATA II as they would still be running from seperate ports?


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## Widjaja (Oct 7, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> we're talking about Sata III here not II



Oops typo 

I meant


			
				Widjaja said:
			
		

> The old HDTune thread has my Sata II 1TB Black and someone elses Sata *III* 1TB WD with images of the average speeds.


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## mediasorcerer (Oct 8, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Because theres not much difference in speed between Sata II and Sata III HDDs but some manufacturers charge more for it just because its Sata III.
> 
> With so much bandwidth. I was hoping Sata III HDDs were at least over the 200-300'ish read and write mark, but their mechanical parts let them down.
> 
> ...



ok fair enough your probably right, there isnt much diff,you learn something new every day ay,haha.

my line of thinking was,and i guess i got my sata 6gb cheap anway,is why buy sata 2 if you can get sata 3 for similar price,but yeh,ive learned something anyway,
ssd is definately the way to go ,with hdrive for storage,

hey while were at it,and you guys are pretty clever people,
i used crystal disk to bench my 60gb vertex -3,heres the results,the writes seem pretty low,anyone got an opinion on why? kind regs from me.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 8, 2011)

atto is a better program to use benching SSDs. Ive used crystal disk with my SSD before and it just gave me some stupidly low results and i panic'd thinking my SSD was going to die as it was running so slow until someone suggested to bench using atto.


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## mediasorcerer (Oct 8, 2011)

your right,here the results for sata 3 500 wd and 60gb v 3,if anyones interested anyhow,thanx for advice too.yes i wondered about the first results with crystal,because the vertex is very very quick,or it feels that way,progs load in seconds and even installing win 7 took about 5-10 mins instead of half hr or so,the wd-500 is peaking round 130 it seems,


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 8, 2011)

even a cheap older Vertex 2 SSD is still leagues faster then that sata III HDD, its rediculous how slow they are.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 8, 2011)

eitherway an HDD performs the same on Sata 1 Sata 2 or Sata 3, there might be a small limitation on Sata 1 on some drives like the Samsung F4 320gb  but otherwise there is no difference in an HDDs performance

only thing currently benefiting from Sata 2 and Sata 3 are SSDs


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 8, 2011)

I got my eye on a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD anyhoo. 550MB/s Read & 510MB/s Write baby!! so long as i manage to sell off my current SSD or just sit on my ass and wait till i save some more money


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## cadaveca (Oct 8, 2011)

Jegergrim said:


> [url]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9760/1stapril.th.png[/URL]
> 
> This is from my drive when it was turning bad, but this is very good estimation of the actual performance, from new, it was slightly faster, but heres a benchmark



My 5900 RPM SATA 6gb/s Seagate ST2000DL003(2TB) Green gets slightly better numbers than this. Add about 15%.

Just to make sure you caught that...5900RPM GREEN drive.



All that said, my SATA 3 Gb/s drives are just slightly below that, but are 7200RPM. Like 10-20MB slower only.

For mechanical drives, the difference is slight, but it is there, for sure. If buying a new drive, there's no reason to NOT go SATA 6gb/s. If looking for a speed upgrade, yeah, SATA 6Gb/s is kinda a waste of time at the moment.

Pairing a small SSD with a large SATA 6Gb/s drive on Intel Z68, using the SSD as a cache drive, has a nice performance boost for the mechanical drive, near doubling performance for common used files, and is so simple to set up, it's scary. You don't need to use SATA 6Gb/s mechanical, either.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 8, 2011)

yeah I was considering using that feature too - getting a 60Gb Sata III and a new 1tb Spinpoint F3


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## mediasorcerer (Oct 9, 2011)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> eitherway an HDD performs the same on Sata 1 Sata 2 or Sata 3, there might be a small limitation on Sata 1 on some drives like the Samsung F4 320gb  but otherwise there is no difference in an HDDs performance
> 
> only thing currently benefiting from Sata 2 and Sata 3 are SSDs



i think your right,as ive learned.the difference is very minimal,


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## Completely Bonkers (Oct 10, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I got my eye on a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD anyhoo. 550MB/s Read & 510MB/s Write baby!! so long as i manage to sell off my current SSD or just sit on my ass and wait till i save some more money


Careful with that particular model. Check personal use reviews. The 120GB Corsair Force is a high-fail model. Not worth the risk IMO.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 10, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Careful with that particular model. Check personal use reviews. The 120GB Corsair Force is a high-fail model. Not worth the risk IMO.



Earlier batch had a lot of failures - they did a global recall. the new batch is fine


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 10, 2011)

not exactly freedom

the sandforce 2280 series controllers still have issues with newer Intel chipsets that cause BSODs and system hangs etc newer firmware helps but the problem still isnt fixed yet and all sandforce 2280 based drives are affected

that means

Corsair
Adata
OCZ
Kingston Hyper X
and many many more are still impacted by these issues

only Samsung, Crucial. Intel are free and clear as far as i am aware. in terms of chipset compatibility


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## qubit (Oct 10, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Ive been told that going from Sata II to Sata III with hard drives is a waste of time.
> 
> However, more and more Sata III hard drives are appearing on the market. and im wondering If hard drives are still struggling to make use of all that bandwidth.
> 
> ...



SATA 3 is a gimmick for mechanical hard drives yes, as they can't even max out a SATA 2 connection (and I think even the original SATA 1, but don't quote me). However, where you see the old v2 and the new v3 on offer for about the same price, then go for the v3, as it might have better long term chipset compatibility.

For SSD's you will see a benefit to going SATA 3.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 10, 2011)

Blah, Im caught in a catch 22 then. I have a Marvell 6GB/s controller on mt board. but i have heard a people saying its limited to 450MB/s

Samsung SSDs arent as widely available here - not yet anyway 
as for the Crucial M4's, they seem to have 2 different versions. one that has a R&W of 415MB/s and the other 550MB/s.

the 550MB/s is a lot more expensive then the 120GB Force 3 i was looking at.


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## INFRNL (Oct 10, 2011)

I would just go with the best price for the size drive you want. you will most likely not feel a difference in real world use. SF based drives are still having some issues and will be hit or miss if your drive is affected.
  New intel drives coming next month as well, but are SF based; not sure if they will have the same issues though.

Benchmarks look good and appear to show big differences, but is totally different in the realworld.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 10, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Blah, Im caught in a catch 22 then. I have a Marvell 6GB/s controller on mt board. but i have heard a people saying its limited to 450MB/s
> 
> Samsung SSDs arent as widely available here - not yet anyway
> as for the Crucial M4's, they seem to have 2 different versions. one that has a R&W of 415MB/s and the other 550MB/s.
> ...



get the M4 128gb 

flash it to the 009 firmware and presto 500+ mb/s read speeds 280mb/s write speeds 


and it uses the same controller as the C300 series just tweaked its rock solid stable 

its what i was going to get but...

newegg as the Adata S510 120gb SSD on sale for $160 for 120gb of SF 2280 550 read 510 write MIR brings it to $140 for a 120gb SSD i couldnt pass it up if it was for that awesome price id have bought the M4 128 for $195


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 10, 2011)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> get the M4 128gb
> 
> flash it to the 009 firmware and presto 500+ mb/s read speeds 280mb/s write speeds
> 
> ...



Lol nowhere in the UK are you gonna get a M4 for that price unless it was secondhand or a refurb.

128GB M4 goes for $265.

----

I wonder why the write speeds are so low though


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Oct 17, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Lol nowhere in the UK are you gonna get a M4 for that price unless it was secondhand or a refurb.
> 
> 128GB M4 goes for $265.
> 
> ...




same thoughts here, i was going to go with a patriot wildfire but someone here said the sandforce chips seem to have a mind of their own, plus like you i have a marvel controller, so i'm going to wait a while to see how many people here have problems with them, although i'm using xp atm, and have heard the bsod don't seem to bother that o/s (might be that most xp users don't want to splash out that much cash on a ssd)

 only time will tell


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 17, 2011)

dr emulator (madmax) said:


> View attachment 43980same thoughts here, i was going to go with a patriot wildfire but someone here said the sandforce chips seem to have a mind of their own, plus like you i have a marvel controller, so i'm going to wait a while to see how many people here have problems with them, although i'm using xp atm, and have heard the bsod don't seem to bother that o/s (might be that most xp users don't want to splash out that much cash on a ssd)
> 
> only time will tell



the 009 firmware for the M4 brings the speeds upto 515MB/s and even higher according to the feedback on crucials forums. writespeed is also boosterd but i cant remember how fast people were saying it was.


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## Tatty_One (Oct 17, 2011)

Go for middle ground, get a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB, size with some decent speed, if you can live with the little idiosyncrasies of course.


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 17, 2011)

Tatty_One said:


> Go for middle ground, get a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB, size with some decent speed, if you can live with the little idiosyncrasies of course.



In that case I might as well make use of the disk caching feature my Z68 board has. all i need is a cheaper Sata III 60GB SSD.

Im considering doing that. but I might need to do a reinstall and thats something i want to avoid


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## claylomax (Oct 17, 2011)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> Samsung F4 320gb can hit 140-150mb.s read and average around 110-115mb/s
> 
> F3 has an average around 110mb/s



I have that drive. Actually it's just as fast as my WD 600Gb Velociraptor, the only difference is the access time: 13.2 vs 6.9.


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## Ferrum Master (Oct 17, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> the 009 firmware for the M4 brings the speeds upto 515MB/s and even higher according to the feedback on crucials forums. writespeed is also boosterd but i cant remember how fast people were saying it was.



I have a 64GB M4... It works flawlessly... read speed indeed boosted to ~500MB with 009 F/W.


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