SATA express pure HDDs

[jonnyyyl]

Not sure I have come across those yet?.....

thx

[flibberdipper]

If HDDs ever go SATA Express, I'll be amazed. Most (if not all) HDD's probably wouldn't care if they were on SATA II and not SATA III.

[Zero_Hour]

No need for them to be on express...

[jonnyyyl]

No need for them to be on express...

 

how come?

HDDs go up to about 6TB these days. Expanding capacity but not the transfer rate seems rather odd, in fact highly counter-productive on the user end because, as users have more and bigger files transferring, that will just make transfer time longer.

 

Even if SSDs do reach over 6TB, I'd imagine that'd be the same case because transfer speeds are capped at a max 550MB/s, which really isnt much.

[DWN]

The top MB vendors can support (with hyper kit) the new upcoming flood of NVME SSD's with X99 or Z97 but you may just want to buy a new system at the end of this year with the new motherboards

 

MB and NVME SSD's: HardOCP SSD's for 2015

 

Current/announced drives

 

And real world game benchmarks just got posted - although I don't really trust gamecrate.

 

http://www.gamecrate.com/benchmarking-gaming-intel-750-ssd/

[dalekphalm]

Not sure I have come across those yet?.....

thx

Mechanical HDD's top out at around 150 MB/s sequential (meaning: large files that are all in one sector after the next physically). read/write speeds. Even 15,000 RPM HDD's top out around 200 MB/s.

 

If you're doing Random small file reads/writes (like 99% of HDD usage), then you're looking at figures closer to 15-30 MB/s.

 

Simply put, SATA Express is a complete and utter waste for HDD's.

[Dabombinable]

Mechanical HDD's top out at around 150 MB/s sequential (meaning: large files that are all in one sector after the next physically). read/write speeds. Even 15,000 RPM HDD's top out around 200 MB/s.

 

If you're doing Random small file reads/writes (like 99% of HDD usage), then you're looking at figures closer to 15-30 MB/s.

 

Simply put, SATA Express is a complete and utter waste for HDD's.

WD Blue (single platter 1TB/7200RPM) manage 185MB/sec, which is just shy of SATA 1's aka SATA 1.5Gbps's limit (just over 187MB/sec).

[dalekphalm]

WD Blue (single platter 1TB/7200RPM) manage 185MB/sec, which is just shy of SATA 1's aka SATA 1.5Gbps's limit (just over 187MB/sec).

Sure but how often will you ever reach those speeds? AND as you yourself mention, that's SATA I speeds, let alone SATA II or III. And SATA Express takes it to another level (Close to 2GB/s - yes, that's GigaBYTES/s).

[Dabombinable]

Sure but how often will you ever reach those speeds? AND as you yourself mention, that's SATA I speeds, let alone SATA II or III. And SATA Express takes it to another level (Close to 2GB/s - yes, that's GigaBYTES/s).

The drives interface is SATA III, its running on SATA III, and it only reaches those speeds transfering large files to and from my SSD (my 2.5" laptop drives peak at 80-120MB/sec).

[dalekphalm]

The drives interface is SATA III, its running on SATA III, and it only reaches though speeds transfering large files to and from my SSD (my 2.5" laptop drives peak at 80-120MB/sec).

That's exactly my original point. A HDD barely tops out SATA I. The OP is wondering about HDD's and SATA Express - well until there's some massive breakthrough in HDD tech, HDD's are totally useless on SATA Express.

[Dabombinable]

That's exactly my original point. A HDD barely tops out SATA I. The OP is wondering about HDD's and SATA Express - well until there's some massive breakthrough in HDD tech, HDD's are totally useless on SATA Express.

Which is what I was saying in a round about way with the speed of my WD Blue compared to SATA 1. SATA 2 is all that's really needed for any HDD.

[dalekphalm]

Which is what I was saying in a round about way with the speed of my WD Blue compared to SATA 1. SATA 2 is all that's really needed for any HDD.

Right. So what I take from this is that we agree.

[Blake]

Expanding capacity but not the transfer rate

The transfer rates are increasing, just at the same ~10MBps improvement that has happened every 3-4 years. You don't realize this most of the time as the HDD starts to degrade.

 

Just because it is not the 100MB-1GBps that happens with SSDs doesn't mean it isn't happening.

[MG2R]

how come?

HDDs go up to about 6TB these days. Expanding capacity but not the transfer rate seems rather odd, in fact highly counter-productive on the user end because, as users have more and bigger files transferring, that will just make transfer time longer.

 

Even if SSDs do reach over 6TB, I'd imagine that'd be the same case because transfer speeds are capped at a max 550MB/s, which really isnt much.

The transfer rate of the physical platter and R/W-head assembly of a hard drive simply does not saturate regular SATA. Reason for this is physics: HDDs have to rotate spinning disks and move actuators to read data, these components have mechanical inertia and thus will have a maximum speed at which they can feasibly operate.

 

To make HDDs read sequential data faster, you need to increase the speed at which the platters rotate. The problem with this, though, is that the faster you spin a disk, the smaller it needs to be to be able to cope with the centripital forces. The other option to make platters handle higher RPMs would be to use stronger materials, but this too has its limits still.

 

Bottom line is that HDDs are pretty much at the end of the performance increases, as long as there isn't new metallurgy allowing the creation of stronger materials.

 

PS: there are 15000 rpm enterprise drives HDDs out there which can get around 250 MB/s sustained throughput. Still not enough to saturate even SATA II though.