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[EpF]

Oh dear, this keeps happening to me! 

I recently upgraded to a dual core athlon, and while things seemed to go smoothly enough after a rocky start, now my computer won't boot. Not even in safe mode. When I use safe  mode, the driver loading list hangs on nvatabus.sys.

Having trawled the net for info, I decided to do a repair install of XP Pro, but the same thing keeps happening. I got the impression from some stuff I read that my maxtor drive might be causing the problem, though I don't know how.

I need to add a new hard drive anyway, so I'm going to buy one at the weekend and try to install XP on it on Saturday to see if that works, but in the meantime, I'd really appreciate it if anyone has any insight into the problem.

Thanks for listening!

[johnnyboy]

Bad luck dude, have you tried a completely fresh format and re-install?
Not sure if I'm convinced it's your HD, haven't really experienced or heard of many instances of the HD causing systems not to work unless they're faulty but you can easily download HD testing tools that run from a bootable CD.
Have you phoned the HD support line, they could tell you easily if there are any known issues with their HD's and your MoBo/CPU.

[glynor]

What make/model of motherboard do you have?  What BIOS version?

Also, is the drive SATA or old PATA?

I have heard of some drives, specifically Maxtors (which I call "Craptors"), causing similar problems, though it typically happens on the very first bootup (not randomly some time later).  These issues can typically be solved by a BIOS update (on the motherboard) or firmware flash (on the drive).  That driver you listed is the nVidia IDE driver, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the one that's crashing (it's likely, but not absolute). Sometimes it can be the one before or the one after causing the problem...

I'm pretty sure I had you burn a UBCD before for hardware testing.  Have you tried booting to that and running Memtest86 and/or Prime95?  (Just to rule out memory/cpu issues.)  If the system also can't load those programs, then you might have something else going on not related to the system drive.  I'd let one full pass of Memtest finish, and just let Prime95 run for 10-15 minutes (you don't need a full burn-in, just to see if it throws errors right away).

I'd also follow johnnyboy's suggestion (after testing with Memtest and Prime quickly) and use the Maxtor Tools boot CD to test the drive for failure.

EDIT:  If you don't know what I mean by the UBCD then I guess it wasn't you.  Go here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and download and burn yourself a disc.  Then boot the computer to it and you can use it to run some hardware tests.

[EpF]

Thanks for the input guys.

Johnnyboy: I don't want to reformat, as I'll be buying a new drive anyway, and I hope I'll be able to access the old one from a working installation of XP on the new one. I also haven't tried contacting Maxtor - my last encounter with them involved completely bricking a drive (which my current one is a replacement for) using their low-level format utility after using their diagnostics tool - PowerMax, I think it's called.

Glynor: It's a SATA drive. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 with latest BIOS 9.

You were right, it was me you told about the UBCD, and I'd forgotten about it! I'll test it out tomorrow. At the moment I'm trying to run Chkdsk from the recovery console, but it's having some trouble (the 'percentage completed' count suddenly reset itself, but now it's inching along). The memory I'm using passed the Memtest tests the last time I used it, so I guess it should still be OK...

Incidentally, following some online advice, I typed 'fixmbr' at the recovery console, and got a warning saying: "this computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record". I didn't go ahead with the fix though, cause of some other dire warnings which followed.

[avenger107]

I think I read somewhere that the current version of fixmbr always throws up that message and the associated dire warnings. Unless you are dual booting or doing something else non-standard, it won't hurt you. I've seen the message and warnings every time I have used it, including right after just running it once before and with known good systems.

I can't say that I have seen it help much anymore either, but it is worth a try.  The fact that safe mode starts to boot and goes through loading at least some of the drivers before it gets stuck seems to indicate the problem might be elsewhere.  But as a shot in the dark it costs nothing and at least won't make matters worse.

Is there a driver CD or floppy that came with your motherboard? If so, during the repair or reinstall, be sure to press the F6 key when asked if there are additional drivers that need to be loaded. I had a similar problem with a Gigabyte motherboard once and had to reinstall the drivers that came with the board before I could get the system operational. Never did find out what had corrupted or deleted the original drivers.   

[glynor]

fixmbr is very unlikely to help unless you're getting a non-system disk or disk error on boot, or a black screen immediately after POST finishes (just before you'd normally see the Windows XP loading splash screen).

As avenger indicated, it is very unlikely to hurt matters unless you have a weird dual-boot setup going.  If you do the Windows XP install disc repair routine, it also performs the same steps as fixmbr, so that should have handled it.

Do one pass of the Memtest86 for me (and 10 minutes of the Prime95 test), just in case you got nailed by lightning or something.

I'll look into Maxtors and the Gigabyte board and let you know what I find.

[InflatableMouse]

It very likely nvata is not needed for your sata drives. Integrated SATA controller on your board is a Silicon Image so I would suggest you disable the integrated PATA controller for the time being and see if it boots.

If it doesn't, you need to get a bootdisk/bootcd that supports NTFS (I don't know how savvy you are) you can try and delete the nvata driver files so windows won't be able to load them at all.

IF that works, launch the nvidia installer from control panel/software and deinstall the Nvidia ATA drivers. They are buggy and known to give problems especially with programs like EAC and CD/DVD burning tools. Use the regular ATA drivers from Windows.

Hope that helps you.
Ingemar.

[EpF]

Glynor: Did the UBCD tests, and both memory and cpu passed -whew!

I am getting a black screen before the windows logo. Here's a description of my computer's boot process:

screen 1: POST, with options to enter BIOS etc.
screen 2: Hard disk report, with options to enter RAID setup (1 for nVidia, 1 for Silicon Image)
screen 3: Hardware readout, with message at end saying "verifying DMI pool.... update successful"
screen 4: Hardware Configuration choices menu
screen 5: Windows logo

The screen goes black after screen 4, and I never see the Windows logo. When I boot into safe mode, I get the driver loading list before and after screen 4, but it hangs at one of the drivers.

I realise that normally when you see the Windows logo, the computer is actually loading all the stuff that you see in safe mode boot (and more), but I just thought I'd explain fully to avoid any confusion, as that 'black screen' problem is a common way of describing some boot problems, but obviously could mean different things...

InflatableMouse: According to the manual, SATA drives on my motherboard are controlled by nForce4 Ultra.

Windows installation disk recovery console can be used to delete files from Windows, but as Glynor mentioned, the fact that nvatabus.sys is the file name at which booting hangs doesn't mean that that file is the problem...

[glynor]

First off, glad to hear the memory and CPU are okay.  I figured they were, but it's pointless to bang your head trying to fix something in the BIOS/software if it's the CPU or Memory making mistakes!

It very likely nvata is not needed for your sata drives. Integrated SATA controller on your board is a Silicon Image so I would suggest you disable the integrated PATA controller for the time being and see if it boots.

That board has both a SI SATA controller and the nVidia controller built into the nForce4 chipset.  We need to verify some settings and some hardware connection choices.

First off... I agree with InflatableMouse.  In general, if you aren't using it, disable it in the BIOS.  It just helps with IRQ conflicts if nothing else!  So, the first thing you need to do is check inside your case for where things are plugged it, and then go into the BIOS and carefully and systematically play with some settings.  It is essential that you do these changes one at a time though!  If you start changing things left and right, you won't be able to remember which settings you changed to be able to "put it back" when it doesn't work, and perhaps more importantly, what setting fixed it when it does!

A good method is to get yourself a pen and some paper.  Enter the BIOS and make 1 change, jot down what it's original value was and what you set it to, then Save & Exit and try to boot.  If it works, celebrate.  If it doesn't (more likely) then re-enter the BIOS on next boot and put it back the way it was, and then try something else systematically.

[glynor]

More in a few minutes....

[glynor]

Here are some suggestions on what to try:

0. Before you even start, go into the BIOS and choose "Load Optimized Defaults" and then "Save & Exit".  Reboot.  Maybe this will even fix it, but if not, then at least you know where you started!

1. Shut down and open your case.  Take a look at where everything is plugged in.  Make sure all your connectors are tight.  I also find that SATA cables can be touchy, so I often remove and reconnect them (from both the motherboard "end" and the hard drive "end").  Also, disconnect anything not essential to getting the computer up and running.  This means, pull out that external sound card (if any), that wireless LAN card, disconnect any extra hard drives.  Unplug all your USB devices except for a keyboard and mouse.  You want basically 1 hard drive, 1 video card, 1 optical drive, 1 keyboard, and 1 mouse and that's it.

2. While you're in there, make a note of where your SATA drive is plugged in.  Your board has two "sets" of SATA ports.  Refer to the picture below:



3.  Next, I'd enter the BIOS setup and start turning stuff off:

     a. Go into Standard CMOS features.  If you don't have a floppy drive, set Drive A to disabled.

     b. Go into Advanced BIOS Features.  Make sure your Hard Disk Boot Priority is set to the appropriate device.  Set the first boot device to CDROM (so we can boot to CD if we need) and the Second Boot Device to Hard Disk.

     c. Set Init Display First to PEG.

     d. Go into Integrated Peripherals.  This is where we need to start turning stuff off. 

     e.  If you aren't using the PATA interface at all (unlikely unless you have a newfangled SATA optical drive), you could go ahead and disable it in the BIOS.  Even if you are using it for an optical drive, I'd probably try disabling it temporarily to see if you can get it to boot.  So for now leave it alone, but later on try setting On-Chip IDE Channel0 & 1 both to disabled.  This is the setting to enable/disable your "old style" Parallel ATA IDE channels.

     f.  Set IDE/SATA RAID Function to Disabled, unless you are using a multi-disk RAID volume (in which case there are a bunch of other issues to address).

(continued soon)

[InflatableMouse]

What Glynor said ...

InflatableMouse: According to the manual, SATA drives on my motherboard are controlled by nForce4 Ultra.

Oke, cool. I looked it up quickly before answering but didn't realize it would have 2 SATA controllers. So if I understand correctly you are not usign the Silicon Image, right?

Nonetheless, unless Nvidia has changed that driver to include the SATA controller on the Nforce chipset, that driver is exclusively used for PATA controllers of the chipset. That is at least my latest experience with Nvidia which I've used for quite a few years. You need to verify that is the case before removing (renaming) the drivers.

It's worth looking into IMO. That would be the easiest way out I guess, if it works.

Also, from my experience you cannot switch your system disk to another controller. It will give you a blue screen.

[glynor]

     g. If your primary hard drive is connected to the nVidia SATA connectors, then set Serial-ATA 1 to Enabled.  If it is connected to the Silicon Image SATA connector, then set Serial-ATA 1 to disabled.

     h. Likewise, if your primary hard drive is connected to the nVidia SATA connectors, then set Serial-ATA 2 to disabled.  If it's connected to the Silicon Image SATA connector then leave that one enabled.

     i. If it's not greyed out, set SATA RAID-5 Function to Disabled.

     j. Disable the Serial Port, IrDA port, and Parallel port.  Also disable (for now) the AC97 Audio codec.

4.  Once all that's done, Save & Exit and then reboot.  If it boots, then you know it's a conflict with something that you had enabled or connected.  Leave anything you aren't using disabled, but you can one at a time reconnect your devices and re-enable things in the BIOS that you are using (like the Serial Port or the AC97 Audio).

5. If it STILL doesn't boot, then it's likely a software issue.  I'd agree with InflatableMouse that the nVidia ATA drivers are somewhat terrible.  They have gotten better lately, but there are still lots of reports of problems with the nForce4 SATA ports.  A couple of notes though...

• If you are overclocking your CPU or RAM at all, the nVidia SATA ports are not locked.  This means they can't be used at all when overclocking and you must switch to the Silicon Image ports.  Clock your CPU back to default (should already be if you followed step 0 above), and you should be able to get into Windows.
  
  
• Try both fixmbr and Windows XP's Repair Installation routines (one at a time).  They shouldn't hurt and they could help.  The Windows XP Repair installation tool is more likely to mess up your settings, but it shouldn't delete any of your files or anything.
  
  
• InflatableMouse might be right that you can't switch the drive to the Silicon Image ports (or vice versa) but I'd try it anyway.  If it gets you into Windows, you can uninstall the nVidia drivers at least and then re-connect to the nVidia ports if you want (though I'd probably stick to the SI ones if it works).
• Check Maxtor's web site to see if there's a new firmware version for your drive.  Unlikely, but it's been known to happen and cause things like this.  Again, it probably would have never worked.  EDIT: I've seen reports online that Maxtor sometimes doesn't have these listed on their web site (in threads about problems with Maxtor SATA drives and nForce 4 SATA controllers failing to boot so that looks pretty suspicious).  Apparently, sometimes you have to call and demand a firmware update before they'll cough it up.
• Did you do anything (at all) to the system before it stopped working?  If so, trying to boot to "Last Known Good Configuration" could work.  If so, then uninstall whatever it was that you installed.
  
  
• If not, then your best bet is to boot to the UBCD and see if you can rename the crashing driver as InflatableMouse suggested.  I know that disc has some program that can read/write to NTFS but I haven't done it myself.  You might have to ask around or Google search.  Another option is to connect the drive to a working WinXP/2K system and rename the file on that one (that's what I do).  If this fails, then you're probably best nuke/paving from scratch when your new drive comes in.
• I generally stick to PATA drives for my system disks.  I've had far fewer problems with them.  That's all I can say there.  I have plenty of SATA disks on my system, but never the boot drives.  Performance isn't quite as good, but unless you care that you lose 2-4 FPS in Oblivion, and take about 1 second longer to boot up, who cares if it works?!?
• In general, on an nForce 4 board, I'd stick to the driver versions you can get from Gigabyte and not download them directly from nVidia (for the chipset stuff).  They seem to release things without testing them very well...  The rule of thumb is that if you don't need it, disable it in the BIOS.

[glynor]

• Check Maxtor's web site to see if there's a new firmware version for your drive.  Unlikely, but it's been known to happen and cause things like this.  Again, it probably would have never worked.  EDIT: I've seen reports online that Maxtor sometimes doesn't have these listed on their web site (in threads about problems with Maxtor SATA drives and nForce 4 SATA controllers failing to boot so that looks pretty suspicious).  Apparently, sometimes you have to call and demand a firmware update before they'll cough it up.

Apparently the errors can crop up after a long while, not just on first boot.  There are specific serial numbers of Maxtor drives that need the firmware fix.  If it's a DiamondMax 9, 10, or 11 and you're on the nVidia SATA ports, I think we have the culprit right there.

Here's some links:

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=articles&go=read&arc_id=59

http://cedsfiles.blogspot.com/2006/02/fix-for-maxtor-sata-ii-drives-nforce-4.html

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t8171.html (check the second post in the thread)

http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5669

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2173522.php

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus/browse_frm/thread/8534058674d754f8/c0f47ff5c0c77301

[InflatableMouse]

One of the Nforce sites that has been of great help to me in the past is

http://www.nforcershq.com/

[EpF]

Glynor and InflatableMouse: Thanks for all your help. I bought a new drive, and after trying all the suggestions to no avail, I'm now installing windows on the new drive, and I hope to be able to upgrade the firmware on the other one when I'm done.

Here's some info that relates to the issues and posts in this thread:
The problem drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax drive (Serial no. 6L200M0).
According to Gigabyte's instructions for installling WinXP onto a SATA drive attached to the GAK8NXP-9 motherboard, you have to install the nVidia storage controller from a floppy during setup (press F6 during setup). That storage controller is nvatabus.sys.

g. If your primary hard drive is connected to the nVidia SATA connectors, then set Serial-ATA 1 to Enabled. If it is connected to the Silicon Image SATA connector, then set Serial-ATA 1 to disabled.

 h. Likewise, if your primary hard drive is connected to the nVidia SATA connectors, then set Serial-ATA 2 to disabled. If it's connected to the Silicon Image SATA connector then leave that one enabled.

In BIOS version F9 for the GAK8NXP-9, 'Serial-ATA 1' is called 'NV Serial-ATA 1'. According to the instructions for setting up a RAID array on a SATA drive attached to that motherboard (Opens PDF file), Serial-ATA 1 is for connectors S_ATA0_SB and S_ATA1_SB, and Serial-ATA 2 is for S_ATA2_SB and S_ATA3_SB connectors. The SiL controller is enabled/disabled using the RAID 5 entry in Integrated Peripherals.

I'll keep you posted about my progress. I'm attempting to install windows without loading nvatabus ( ). The drive is being formatted at the moment, and instead of identifying the disk as 'Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on nvatabus [MBR]', it has 'atapi' for 'nvatabus'. If this works, I'll be happy, but maybe I won't be getting the full 3GB/s transfer rate out of my SATA 2 drive...

[EpF]

Well, installing without nvatabus worked, but in Device Manager, under Properties>Details Tab, the new drive comes up as IDE\WD2500..etc. I guess this means that it is not functioning at optimum SATAII capacity. I'll probably reinstall with the nvatabus though, cause it really does seem like a disk problem.

Although my old drive is readable and writable under XP, I still haven't got any joy out of it at boot. I downloaded PowerMax, but it doesn't see the disk. When I load PowerMax with the Maxtor drive installed on the SiL channel, it can see only the Western Digital drive, but with the Maxtor on the nVidia channel, it doesn't get past 'detecting devices, please wait'.

I'm nervous about using the old Maxtor drive now, because I'm not sure if I can rely on it through windows, even if I format it and remove the MBR. I'm going to contact Maxtor now, and see what they come up with...

[InflatableMouse]

Silicon Image isn't a bad controller IMO.

Why don't you hook it up to that one and reinstall?

You probably still need a floppy disk with the driver though, but personally I never had a problem with the integrated Silicon Image controllers.

I'm going out on a limb here but I think the integrated stuff on the chipset share a single pci bus. The Silicon Image is a separate controller on its own bus. So if anything the SI may even give better performance, theoretically speaking

[glynor]

Silicon Image isn't a bad controller IMO.

Quite true.  I'd probably stick to using the SI ports.  They should provide full SATA2 support according to what I read in your board's manual.

You don't want anything enabled in BIOS that refers to RAID.  You might be using ports that can be used in a RAID config, but you're not using that function so leave it alone (and don't install the RAID drivers).

Installing the nVidia SATA drivers should be fine.  It was a conflict with the craptastic Maxtor drive, not a problem with the nVidia drivers in this case.

I'm going out on a limb here but I think the integrated stuff on the chipset share a single pci bus. The Silicon Image is a separate controller on its own bus. So if anything the SI may even give better performance, theoretically speaking

The on-chip nVidia controller hangs off a PCI-e bus, not a PCI bus.  I'm not sure about the SI controller, but typically the extras are PCI.

Generally, with a nForce 4 board the nVidia SATA will give good performance, but since they're unlocked (meaning, as you increase the memory/hyperthreading speed it increases the PCIe bus speed for those ports) so you can't use them when overclocking (which is why they include the extras).

The SI ports should be just as good in real life.  You should check into reviews if you're going to overclock that board to see if some of the nVidia ports are locked (sometimes 3 & 4 are but 1 & 2 aren't).

[glynor]

That maxtor definitely sounds iffy to me.  I'd probably get everything I needed off of it and RMA it back to them.  Tell them that PowerMax (or whatever their tools disk thing is called) doesn't see it and that you can't boot with it.  I'm sure they'll take it back.

[glynor]

How'd it turn out?

[EpF]

How'd it turn out?

Sorry it took so long to get back to you guys about this, but Maxtor have been really rubbish at tech support (as well as hard drive manufacturing!). Anyway, after waiting for a reply for a week, I just rang them now, and they are sending me a replacement drive. Maybe I won't have so much trouble with the replacement, because when I took the old one out of the machine to get the serial numbers etc., I noticed that it is actually a refurbished drive (from the last time the hard-drive failed: That time the drive was totally unusable after performing a low-level format using PowerMax). Maybe the same problem persisted through the refurbishment process..

The SI ports should be just as good in real life.

I thought the SI ports were SATA-1, i.e., 1.5GB/s data transfer, as opposed to 3GB/s on the nVidia ports. Is that what you mean by 'in real life'; that I wouldn't actually notice any difference?

One very weird thing that I now see on my new setup with XP installed, is that my new Western Digital drive and the old Maxtor both show up when I click that 'remove hardware safely' green arrow in the taskbar! I'm just assuming that, even if I did accidentally click on the C:\ drive, it wouldn't actually be able to 'stop' it, seeing as it's the system drive... still, it'd be kinda like the OS trying to commit suicide! 

[glynor]

I thought the SI ports were SATA-1, i.e., 1.5GB/s data transfer, as opposed to 3GB/s on the nVidia ports. Is that what you mean by 'in real life'; that I wouldn't actually notice any difference?

Right.  The SATA1 1.5Gb/s bus (by the way it is Gigabits per second, or Gb, not Gigabytes per second, or GB -- different by a factor of eight) was already faster than any 7200 RPM hard disk was able to spit out data stored on the magnetic disk.  The only times you'd see any difference at all with most hard drives is when you're pulling data from the drive's cache (usually 8MB or 16MB on newer disks).  The disks cache data that was recently accessed so that subsequent accesses are much, much faster.

Unless you're using applications that do very heavy disk access on the same small datasets over and over (some databasing applications for example), and even then only if the data set easily fits into your drive's cache and you're not using the computer for anything else, the "Real World" differences between SATA1 and SATA2 will be measured in milliseconds if anything at all.

That won't last though.  Drive manufacturers are moving towards (Microsoft is kicking and screaming and dragging them towards it) building drives with huge caches in order to boost performance (the so-called hybrid drives).  These drives will have (for example) a 8 GB solid-state DRAM "section" and then the rest of the capacity will be regular magnetic media.  This should enable SATA2 to finally really come in handy, as the data transfers from the solid state part of the drive will certainly be able to fill the 3 Gbps of bandwidth that SATA2 provides.  There are also currently a handful of expensive 10,000 RPM drives.  These can use a tiny bit more than the 1.5 Gbps of bandwidth that SATA1 provides, but they're quite high-end and they still by no means fill the full 3.0 Gbps of the SATA2 spec.  Until the hybrid drives start really appearing -- barring some specialty application, super-high-end drives, and multi-disk sets -- it's mostly hype.

Anandtech explains it this way:

The obvious difference between the two is their bandwidth capabilities, with burst transfer rates being theoretically twice as fast on the newer standard. The problem is that SATA is a point-to-point protocol, so each drive gets a separate connection. Until we start seeing drives that can sustain transfer rates of over 150 GB/s, we're not going to saturate even the original SATA bandwidth. That's not to say that the newer drives aren't sometimes better, but that's largely due to increased platter densities and other tweaks as opposed to the modified SATA interface.

One very weird thing that I now see on my new setup with XP installed, is that my new Western Digital drive and the old Maxtor both show up when I click that 'remove hardware safely' green arrow in the taskbar! I'm just assuming that, even if I did accidentally click on the C:\ drive, it wouldn't actually be able to 'stop' it, seeing as it's the system drive... still, it'd be kinda like the OS trying to commit suicide! 

That is quite odd.  I'm sure that it won't let you eject your C drive.  I don't think they should be showing up there though... Weird!

[newsposter]

Well, in a raid environment I wouldn't use anything other than a chipset from 3Ware or Adaptec.

All of my boxes use 3Ware 7506-4LP cards for the raid-1 boot drives and 7506-8 cards for the raid-5 storage drives.  I've got two XP workstations, a WinMCE machine, and three NAS/RAID boxes.  The NAS/RAID boxes server up about 5 Tb of disk at the moment.  The 3Ware cards do all of the heavy lifting for raid and data integrity so all the OS has to do is manage the filesystems.

One way to find a decent raid controller is to see what is supported in Linux and how those boys and girls use the cards and modify the drivers.  If there is a lot of bitching in Linux, you can almost bet that the card and/or chipset is unstable at a hardware level, so much so that it can't be fixed with driver magic.

If a card is well-thought-of under Linux, then have a look at it for windows server style disk work (raid 1, 5, 10) including NAS.

Oh, and just for giggles, y'all might want to 'do the math' on disk interfaces and chipset throughput.

PATA 133 is 133 megaBYTES per second on an arbitrated bus.  SATA is 1-3 gigaBITS per second on unarbitrated busses.  Divide the SATA rate by 8-10 (depending on how you want to account for parity) to get the PATA equivalent.  Now bounce both of those numbers by the steady-state throughput of the motherboard chipset, not the peak throughput.  Mobo chipsets do things in parallel; 2, 4, and 8 BYTES at a time.  Having to wait and stop-start for SATA chipsets to assemble their bits into bytes creates a lot of overhead that PATA does not.

You'll quickly find that the max-theoretical throughput of a 3 Gb SATA drive set barely exceeds the real-world throughput of a PATA drive set.  And this is well before you start to take into account that error detection & correction is built into PATA while it's an external (software & drivers) 'feature' of SATA.

Now look at the media-management capabilities of PATA raid controlers vs SATA and you will start to wonder how the wool got pulled over your eyes regarding SATA vs PATA.

Other than to enrich the chipset makers when enthusiasts flock on over to a new technology without fully understanding what it is all about, there isn't yet a real-world reason to run to SATA when you can get better peforming PATA drives and controllers at the same price or cheaper.

[glynor]

PATA 133 is 133 megaBYTES per second on an arbitrated bus.  SATA is 1-3 gigaBITS per second on unarbitrated busses.  Divide the SATA rate by 8-10 (depending on how you want to account for parity) to get the PATA equivalent.  Now bounce both of those numbers by the steady-state throughput of the motherboard chipset, not the peak throughput.  Mobo chipsets do things in parallel; 2, 4, and 8 BYTES at a time.  Having to wait and stop-start for SATA chipsets to assemble their bits into bytes creates a lot of overhead that PATA does not.

Correct.  Drives rarely (if ever) run at burst-speeds, and sustained throughputs for SATA (both 1.5 Gbps and 3.0 Gbps) are almost identical to those of PATA drives (south of 50 MB/s).  Like I said... For now, the speed difference is almost entirely hype. The primary benefits of SATA are:

1. Longer cable length and less obnoxious cables.
2. Simpler connector (less prone to damage)
3. Hot plugging
4. Independence from the PCI bus (often)

It also helps that you can't get the big "perpendicular" drives with PATA interfaces thus far, so for the future this could become important.  Overall the benefits listed above can't be completely discounted though, especially if you've ever broken a PATA connector (I certainly have) or broken a ribbon cable by stretching it to it's limits.  I was also able to drop my internal case temps quite significantly when I switched my RAID5 from PATA to SATA, due to better airflow in the case.  This, of course, doesn't apply as much to real, high-end rackmount enclosures, which is why most of them haven't switched over to SATA yet.

Also, the fact that that 133 MB/s of bandwidth is shared between all the devices on your PCI bus looms large.  If you get into a situation where your PCI bus is sharing bandwidth between a bunch of hungry devices (or a bunch of drives) you can end up in a trouble spot.  Many onboard SATA connections don't suffer from this issue since they are hung directly off of the motherboard's chipset via a PCIe link.  This is not always true though (and on EpF's board, the SI SATA ports are on the PCI bus).

Still doesn't matter.  The performance differences are infinitesimal at best.

[EpF]

you will start to wonder how the wool got pulled over your eyes regarding SATA vs PATA.

Other than to enrich the chipset makers when enthusiasts flock on over to a new technology without fully understanding what it is all about

!

The performance differences are infinitesimal at best.

I have to admit, when I bought this rig I was trying to buy something as close to top of the range as I could (2 years ago), and it's only after reading the last two posts here that I'm beginning to understand how relative that determination can be! After all, it's a 64bit system and I'm not reaping the benefits of that, as far as I know, because I haven't been able to afford a 64bit OS, never mind that I don't even know whether or not I'd have any issue with finding appropriate drivers... For someone who built their own system I probably seriously lack in understanding of how it all works together.

It's a strange environment, where someone like me finds themselves thinking that the next logical step is to assemble their own hardware, leaving themselves at the mercy of the available wisdom on the internet for troubleshooting and security/privacy/hardware/OS maintenance, (and by far the most valuable and helpful I've found has been Glynor's, so big thank you to you, G  ), and yet a friend of mine even went as far as to proudly text me to say that she was defragging her hard drive! It's as though a huge number of people have been hoodwinked into investing in PCs, when what they thought they were getting were MACs! 

Which is not to say that I regret it at all, and I think I'd be bored by a MAC, but I'm often left with the impression that you need to be quite a technically-minded person to really be responsible for a computer. That seems to apply to me more than I realised! 

Anyway, if I were building another computer, I'd be better prepared now. And I reckon that, in the not too distant future, I'll be buying an IDE drive for my OS! Any recommendations as to a reliable manufacturer, Glynor?

[glynor]

Western Digital or Seagate.

That's all I buy.

And, though I love mine, Macs come with their own set of complexities.  That's for sure.  That being said, if I were going to buy an off-the-shelf computer (which, barring a laptop, is very unlikely to happen), it would almost certainly be one of these.  For a high-end workstation, they really can't be beat in price or performance.

I'd slap Windows XP on it (and keep OSX too of course), and enjoy some dual CPU, dual-core Xeon goodness.

Oh and Windows XP x64 edition?  Don't even go there.  Vista64 might be better, but XP64 is a nightmare of ands, ifs, and buts.  And it don't perform a drop better for anything you do (high-end database apps?  yes, but then why are you running those on a desktop anyway?)  The 64 bit capability of that Athlon64 won't really come in handy until Vista comes around.  Again... That's mostly hype on the desktop (eventually it won't be though).  The AMD Athlon64 CPUs were still the best deal (price and performance wise) that you could get back when you built the system, 64-bit hype notwithstanding!

[newsposter]

and a high-performance disk controller, one with a 'real' hardware raid chipset and gobs of read/write cache and an on-board battery for safety.

Those controllers cost upwards of $400 (be sure to check ebay first though!), but they are the best $400 you can spend on a system.

A mid-range cpu and ram with a very fast disk system will outperform a super-fast cpu/ram system that has 'ordinary' disk every single time.

Systems don't often wait for cpu/ram to catch up, they wait for disk I/O.

[EpF]

To add what should be the last episode in this story, I finally received a replacement drive from Maxtor (now Seagate). It says that it is 'refurbished to Maxtor specifications' - needless to say, at this stage I reckon my standards are higher than Maxtor's, but I'm hoping that in fact it has been refurbished to Seagate's specifications. Anyway, I'll install it this weekend and see how it fares.

Thanks again to all for the help and suggestions!