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HighPoint Announces SATA 6Gb Controller Availability

Jason Barry — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:09:09 -0500

HighPoint Technologies unveiled the Rocket 600 series host adapter. The first of its kind it supports SATA 6Gb/s over PCI-Express 2.0

The Rocket 600 series cards boast 6Gb/s performance for two drives offering 500MB/s throughput. It uses standard SATA cables and connectors and features two types of backwards compatibility. First, it supports PCI-Express 1.0 as well as SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s devices. Driver support was written in compliance with the AHCI standard so driver support is native to most operating systems.

The new series features two cards: the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622. The more expensive ($79.99) Rocket 622 offers eSATA ports instead of the SATA connectors on the $69.99 Rocket 620. The new adapters will be available late October into early November.

Data sheet and specifications can be found on the HighPoint site.

Super Talent, Toshiba Team Up for Ultimate SSD Power

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:15:28 -0500

Super Talent and Toshiba today announced a new range of co-branded SSDs called the UltraDrive DX. The official press release was largely dedicated to UltraDrive DX’s twin-layer encryption. It features password encryption as its first line of defense and hardware data randomization technology as the second.

Data randomization occurs with every write to the drive but still fails to prevent the drive from marching at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

“As the first Toshiba co-branded SSD on the market, UltraDrive DX features a Toshiba controller and Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memories. The DX provides superb security and reliability features combined with cutting edge performance in both read and write speeds,” said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent.

Image Credit: Super Talent

New Mini-SATA Interface Designed for Netbooks

Jason Barry — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:29:22 -0500

The SATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is planning to introduce the latest SATA connector at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF). The new platform, named mini-SATA (mSATA), is roughly the size of a business card and is similar in size to the PCI Express Controller.

Primarily aimed at manufacturers, the mSATA connector was designed for smaller storage solutions, such as 32 to 64GB and meant to supplement primary storage. The folks at SATA-IO anticipate that the new module will allow systems makers to provide more creative storage solutions such as dedicated OS or application drives.

Toshiba and SanDisk also announced they would be debuting mSATA modules in various storage sizes at their booths at IDF. Overall, the new platform will create smaller netbooks and mobile products and "Smaller is always better,” says Steve Duplessi, tech analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

SATA vs. IDE

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:25:35 -0500

I am planning on building a new video-editing system and have never configured SATA devices before.

Does the SATA architecture work in a similar fashion as IDE (i.e., master and slave devices per channel) or are the ports single-homed? I was planning on building a system with RAID 1 OS drives, a separate swap file drive, and RAID 1 data drives. That would use up five ports if they are single-homed. Which brings me to my second question: Is there a benefit to having SATA optical drives or should I put them on the IDE channels?

—Matthew Miller

Matthew, SATA ports are single-homed and single-channel: one drive, one port. So you won’t be able to run master-slave setups via SATA. The good news is that most modern motherboards feature on-board RAID controllers that will make setting up your arrays easy. One note of caution, however: Intel’s ICHR south bridge chipsets won’t let you designate certain ports as SATA and others as RAID after the fact very easily. That is, if you want to start with one drive and later add RAID to the other ports, the drive with the OS on it will usually stop booting because it has to be added to an array. But Nvidia’s chipsets will allow you to, for example, set up four ports as RAID and one as a standard SATA.

There’s no real advantage to running optical drives on SATA as opposed to IDE, provided you can still find a good IDE optical drive. That at least will allow you to free up your SATA ports for your RAID.

Another idea is to grab an inexpensive RAID controller, like the HighPoint RocketRAID 2640x4 to run your RAID, and keep your onboard SATA ports free for your swap and optical drives.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

SATA Revision 3.0 Spec Released

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:31:05 -0500

While the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) introduced the SATA Revision 3.0 specification in August of last year, they’ve just now completed and released it.

SATA 3.0 will double transfer speeds to 6Gbps, and will be fully backwards compatible with earlier versions of SATA. And, for those of you looking forward, you’ll enjoy the new streaming commands for isochronous data transfers between audio and video applications, and the Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector for smaller 1.8-inch drives.

It’s expected that there will be demonstrations of SATA 3.0 at Computex, but there’s no real word on how long it’ll take for this technology to make its way to the masses.

OCZ’s New SSD Abandons SATA

Justin Kerr — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:18:30 -0500

SSD prices have been improving steadily over the past year, but they are still priced out of reach for the average user in any type of practical capacity. That being said, our readers are Maximum right? So for those of you who have been considering SSD’s, you might want to hold out just a bit longer.

The newest entrant into the category comes from OCZ who is preparing to launch their new solid state drive, and the specs are pretty impressive. The new “Z-Drive” will bypass SATA bottlenecks by hooking directly onto a spare PCIe slot. The architecture of the drive has also clearly been tuned for performance with the four Vertex controllers being configured in a four-way RAID 0.

On paper this drive is capable of read speeds up to 510MB/sec, and write speeds to match idling out around 480MB/sec. Of course we won’t be able to verify these speeds until we get one in the lab, but if true, it could be one of the fastest consumer drives to date. The initial launch will see three different capacities made available, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. Pricing hasn’t been released just yet, but as with any new cutting edge SSD, expect it to cost more than most PCs.

Getting the Lowdown on Seagate and Maxtor Firmware Fixes

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:24:40 -0600

As our own Paul Lilly's been telling us recently, many Seagate hard disks have been afflicted by firmware woes. Unfortunately, Seagate's first attempt to fix the problem wound up turning working drives into high-tech bricks.

As it turns out, both Seagate and Maxtor-brand SATA drives can be affected by firmware problems. So, how can you find out exactly which models may be on the naughty list and when Seagate has a firmware fix that's ready for prime time? Here's how.

To determine if you have a drive that's affected, you need to know the drive's model number, firmware revision, and serial number. Seagate offers the free Drive Detect utility, which displays this information.

You can also determine the drive's model number by opening Device Manager in Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, and expanding the Disk Drives category. To view the firmware revision, open the Details tab (if present) and select Hardware IDs from the pull-down menu. The firmware revision is listed thus (Windows 7 Beta shown, Windows XP and Vista are similar):

The serial number is listed on the drive's faceplace, or you can find it on the original box.

Once you know this information, open Seagate KB article 207931 and look up your drive. The following families of drives are affected:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA(160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB capacities)
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA (250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB)
Maxtor DiamondMax 22 SATA (160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB capacities)

See the KB article for specific model numbers.

To find out which firmware revisions need to be updated, and to be notified when a working update is available, click the link for your drive family. When recommended firmware is available, the download link will be posted. As an alternative to revisiting the drive family's page until the firmware update is posted, click the Subscribe icon and enter your email address. Seagate will send you an email when the page is updated.

In the meantime, follow the links on Paul Lilly's report on firmware problems to see how other users are dealing with the problem - and, back up your drives!

With SATA 6Gb/s Specification Coming, SATA-IO Provides Naming Guidance

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:39:32 -0500

Confused by terms like SATA II, SATA Gen 2, and SATA 3Gb/s? You're not alone. With today's release (link in PDF format) of the PHY (physical layer) portion of the forthcoming SATA revision 3.0 specification (details here), SATA-IO, the trade association responsible for defining Serial ATA specifications, is trying hard to stomp out the many misidentifications of SATA specifications and features over the years.

SATA revision 3.0 doubles the speed of the current 3Gb/s version, reaching transfer speeds of 6Gb/s. So, what should you call the newest member of the SATA specifications family? According to the SATA Naming Guidelines, here's what to do:

The first reference in a document should read: "Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0." Additional references can be to either "SATA Revision 3.0" or "SATA 6Gb/s."

SATA-IO is also serious about cleaning up the confusion surrounding current technologies and products as well:

Don't use "SATA I" or "Gen 1": instead, use "SATA Revision 1.x" or "SATA first generation" or "SATA 1.5Gb/s."
Likewise, "SATA II" or "SATA Gen 2" are also on the "don't talk that way" list, replaced by "SATA Revision 2.x" or "SATA second generation" or "SATA 3.0Gb/s."

The SATA Naming Guidelines page includes a useful table for helping computer users, marketers, technical writers (like yours truly) and others properly describe the three generations of SATA drives and devices. With SATA Revision 3.0 expecting to be ratified by the end of the year, here's hoping this initiative will help undo the years of confusion over SATA.

Look for the SATA Label...

SATA-IO is also working to make sure that SATA devices work properly, with today's launch of its certified logo program (link in PDF format). To learn more about SATA-IO, see the SATA-IO website.

Mystery Solved!

So, where did the term SATA II come from? SATA II was the original name of the current SATA International Organization (SATA-IO).

Illustration courtesy of SATA-IO.