Granite Digital SATA LCD Hot-Swap - Manual (Page 4)

Granite Digital • 3101 Whipple Rd. • Union City, Ca. 94587 www.granitedigital.com
USER GUIDE Page 4
How SATA Works
In order to get SATA to perform at its maximum speed, the following
items should be considered:
1) Pick the controller card that best suits your needs. SATA Host Adapters
come in a variety of models from 2 channel to 16 channel RAID cards. Also
it is important to note that not all SATA Host Adapters support Hot-Swap and
without that ability the drive can only be removed when the computer is
turned off.
2) The drive mechanism must go fast. Currently SATA drives are rated at
300MB/s burst rate and most drives can sustain 55MB/s data transfer rates.
In order to get SATA to go faster, a Stripped RAID (also known as RAID 0)
must be created. RAID is supported by most operating systems so having a
knowledge of the operating system is important. The other
alternative is to purchase a RAID Host Adapter. The advantage here is that
most RAID Host Adapters will perform at higher data transfer rates than their
software alternatives.
3) The computer and the speed of its PCI bus will directly affect the
performance of the SATA Bus and their drives. Earlier computer models run
at a fraction of the speed of the newer models. In order for the drives to
transfer at their highest performance levels use of a high performance com-
puter is also a must. Again, the newer computer technologies offer the
greatest performance levels.
There are two types of SATA cables (shielded for external use and
unshielded for internal use) and two types of connectors. The original SATA
connector is known as the “L” type because it’s opening looks like an “L”. The
new eSATA connector, known as an “I” type because the connector is similar
to the letter “I”. The eSATA “I” connector is almost identical to the SATA “L”
with the exception that it is designed to be used as a Hot-Swap type of
connection with many more insertions and removals than the original “L” type.