SATA Hard Drives

By Andreas Lee

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (Serial ATA) is also known as SATA Hard Drives, which dominate hard drives market these days. Comes with better performance than the Parallel ATA (PATA) Drives and far away in front of its ancestor Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE Drives) in terms of specification.

SATA Drives first model (SATA1) has a better performance than PATA series, whether from its RPM or its transfer speed, smaller cable size than IDE cable, and a small cable slot that allows simplified installation.

IDE and SATA cable comparison

sata and ide cables

Western Digital Caviar Black SATA Hard Drives

sata hard drives

SATA1 successor is SATA2 which its specification certainly better than the previous, two times faster transfer speed, and some have pretty large buffer cache. One of them is Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB, can be found with relatively cheap price. SATA Hard Drives provide the best hard drives performance as you want, it is convenient in playing high resolution games, photo editing, video watching, or using multimedia software.

Specs

• Capacity : 500 GB
• Buffer cache size : 32 MB
• Disk rotation speed : 7200 rpm
• Interface: SATA 3 Gb/s
• Model : WD5001AALS
• Warranty : 5 years warranty

How To Handle Damaged SATA Hard Drives

Based on computer users observation, damage on SATA Hard Drives can be due to a fast transfer speed, indicated by a buzz noise. Recommended to backup your data as soon as possible, make it fast. This is important: do not use any software, downloading, or doing anything, just save your data (make the priority for important data), and after that check where the damaged location is. You can try to re-install Operating System, checking the bad sector by using the Error-Checking on the hard drive properties, or Scandisk Utility will automatically be used when the computer suddenly restarted.

Note: Try to use Data Recovery Software to restore lost data after the problem solved due to the crash occurred on your SATA Hard Drives.

In this case, don’t bother to check SATA Hard Drives cable because the problem is not on the cable even if the BIOS do not recognize the hard drive. Using the hard drive expert service is a best decision if you find a dead-end.

Also, take a look on my other helpful articles in: firewire hard disk and external micro drive

How to Choose Your Laptop Hard Drives

By Andreas Lee

laptop hard drive

When purchasing a laptop, you should consider laptop hard drives type rather than just pay attention on laptop specs. Have you ever felt while using the laptop, your laptop battery ran out of power very quickly especially when using lots of software or playing game for a long time, although you have selected a laptop which has long time use battery. Maybe when you bought the laptop, you didn’t pay attention on laptop hard drives type, SATA (ATA) drive or IDE drive.

Laptop hard drives SATA save your laptop battery power more, even if revolutions per minute (rpm) and the buffer cache size on some SATA drives are the same as the IDE drives specs. Based on my observations, even though laptop hard drives SATA have the same specifications with IDE drive but the performance of SATA drive is still faster.

Here I describe the specification which must be considered when choosing laptop hard drives:

Capacity

The data storage capacity in laptop hard drives. The larger the data storage capacity, the better the specification. I recommend choosing the large capacity laptop hard drives, since it can be data backup storage, and for the future in case you need more data storage.

Revolutions per second (RPM, r/m)

The number of disk component rotation in 1 minute. The greater the capacity, the greater the rpm. It’s better to choose 7200 rpm laptop hard drives for best performance.

Buffer cache size

Buffer cache is a temporary storage for files that have been used or read. The larger buffer cache size, the greater storage capacity, and the faster accessing back previously used files. Therefore choose the best buffer cache size if you want a laptop hard drives with the best specs.

If you already have a laptop and want to replace your laptop hard drive with a new one, make sure it is compatible with your laptop motherboard. I always remind you about this, because if you’ve already bought a laptop hard drive, usually you can not change with another hard drive if your laptop motherboard is not compatible.

Please check also my other guides on: 120GB hard disk drive, HDD, and hard drive camcorder.

ATA Hard Drive Definition

By Andreas Lee

Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a new generation hard drive technology after Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). The hard drive which was improved by ATA technology also known as ATA drive.

No need specific controller to support the drive so any computers can use ATA hard drive since this type of hard drive has drive controller attached within it, but ATA connection must be supported with your computer’s motherboard.

Important to know that there are six types of ATA, namely Ultra ATA (has 33 Mbps maximum transfer rate), ATA/66 (has 66 Mbps transfer rate), ATA/100 (has 100 Mbps transfer rate), ATA-1, ATA-2 which also known as fast ATA, and ATA-3.

IDE drive technology is still used on ATA drive. That’s why some ATA hard drives in the market are labeled as IDE/ATA drives.

ATA hard drive installation

Have you ever played Lego? Installing an ATA hard drive is easier than playing Lego. Just take out the right side of hard drive case and you will see data cable and power cable as seen in the picture below.

ata hard drive

Then, stick the ATA hard drive at the drive base empty slot at the lower place of the CPU, make sure that the drive position is correct (the connector side position is on the back). Put the screws by using screwdriver into two screw holes to tighten the drive. Finally, stick data cable and power cable in ATA hard drive connector, close the CPU case, and it is done.

Tips: You can leave the CPU case open to make it not so easily get heat while using computer.

This video demonstrates how to install an ATA drive.

My Other articles that you might be interested in: 500gb external hard drive and computer hard disk drive.