On Sat, 2007-09-29 at 06:57 -0600, Karl Larsen wrote: > In my case I did a new computer and it had the SATA built in so I in > error thought they were a lot faster data rate. But they work and the > thinner cable is easy to work with. Faster, just not incredibly faster. Remember when plain old IDE/ATA moved to UDMA? How speeds were supposed to be radically faster, the truth was that the initial burst of data *was* quite a lot quicker, but subsequent streaming of data wasn't anywhere near as fast. It was a caching trick. All these little speed increases depend on other things, how fast the platter spins, how many heads, how much and fast the heads move about, the interface, etc. Many transfer speeds you see mentioned are the theoretical maximums, during the best conditions. Be warned that the SATA connectors aren't very robust. Like the old ribbon cables, you're expected to build a system and leave it alone. If you keep on fiddling, you can easily break the connectors. This time, though, the connectors on the drive are also as fragile as the ones on the cables. -- (This box runs FC5, my others run FC4 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.