Here are your choices:
SATA (a.k.a. Serial ATA)
For most Vista users, SATA is probably your best bet. It??™s faster than
IDE (next), supports hot-swapping (connecting and disconnecting while
the PC is on), and is easier to hook up (no jumpers or ribbon cables).
Look for a SATA 3.0 (also known as SATA II) drive with the NCQ
(Native command queuing) feature for the best performance.
The main drawback is that SATA connectors are flimsy and easily broken,
so if you??™ll be hot-swapping your drives, consider instead eSATA
(SATA with a stronger connector for external drives) or SCSI (described
shortly).
ATA (a.k.a. Parallel ATA or IDE)
This interface is now totally obsolete. Even if you have an older PC with
only an IDE controller on the motherboard, it??™s usually a better idea to
get a SATA card ($20??“$30) and a SATA drive than to invest in an older
IDE drive.
Consider IDE only if you have a laptop that just takes 2.5-inch IDE
drives, or if you need to set up a dual-boot system with an older version
of Windows that doesn??™t support SATA.
SCSI/SAS
Ultra320 SCSI is still faster than SATA, and will likely be your only
choice if you want a super-fast 15K RPM drive. But given that SCSI controllers
are unreasonably expensive, as are SCSI drives, consider this
option only if you absolutely need the fastest drive money can buy.
Hard Disk | 263
Performance
USB/Firewire
If you??™re buying an external drive??”which is great for backups, as I??™ll
explain in Chapter 6??”you may be tempted to get a USB drive or enclosure.
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