This article is a quick discussion of the data and commentary of Tom's Hardware Guide roundup of 9 laptop hard drives.
Serial ATA 150 vs. Parallel ATA 100
A new hard drive interface debuted with the Sager 9860 laptop: Serial ATA/150 (SATA). For the past decade or so, we've been using parallel ATA, and the most recent is parallel ATA/100. SATA/150 has enough bandwidth to transfer up to 150 MB/s while parallel ATA/100 transfers up to 100 MB/s. Just by looking at that, you'd think that SATA is faster, and you'd be right... well, sort of. The fastest hard drive currently available is the 60 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi parallel ATA/100 drive. It currently does not have an SATA version. That drive can transfer data up to 40-45 MB/s, which is still much slower than the 100 MB/s limit of ATA/100. Even if you used a SATA version of the 7200 rpm drive, it is still roughly that same speed because extra bandwidth is only useful if the drive can take advantage of it. Having 2 hard drives makes that figure get much closer to that 100 MB/s limit, but it is still less. Parallel ATA shares the bandwidth between two drives on the same channel so 2 drives use about 80-90 MB/s maximum. The current SATA advantage is the connector. Parallel ATA laptop hard drives use a special connector that is different from what desktop hard drives use so you have to have an adapter to connect a laptop drive to a desktop computer. SATA connectors are identical on desktops and laptops so your laptop drive will connect to a desktop computer just like a desktop drive. Also, when the next generation Pentium M chipset arrives in the first half of 2005, SATA laptop drives will become the dominant option. So for the best possible long term upgrade path, SATA will be the winner... more>>>