Benefits Of SAS & SATA Laptop Hard Drives

 

The abbreviations may look similar, but they are very much different technologies. Both are the different kinds of laptop harddrives, also used in servers, and each has pros and cons. Let us explore a few benefits of SATA and SAS hard drives.

SATA Hard Drives

SATA is the current development of the ATA hard drive from the 1990s and early 2000s, as used in home desktop computers. Every computer sold today comes with SATA-II or SATA-III, now often with SSD.

Benefits of SATA Hard Drives

1.   Good storage for infrequently-accessed data – An ideal use for SATA is storage for backup snapshots, media, images, or files. A large RAID-protected SATA-based array will work wonders, as the writes/reads are more often than not sequential.

2.   Sequentially quick – SATA is really good at writing sequentially. It is capable of 6 Gbps throughput, and can actually write at that rate, if no random reads or writes are engaged.

3.   Cheaper than SAS – SATA hard drives are usually 75% less than similar SAS hard drives. So hosting providers can offer more storage space at a lower cost – or at a higher profit margin. And dedicated server customers can make the most of larger storage, such as backup drives.

SAS Hard Drives

SAS is the current development of the SCSI interface drives used in higher-end workstations and servers. The same as consumer laptops that come with 1TB laptop drives, the majority of modern servers come with SSD or HDD – but quicker and more dependable. It is the de facto standard used by enterprises.

Benefits of SAS Hard Drives

1.   Better suited to 24/7 workloads – SAS is made for servers, and often have 100% duty cycles. Unlike SATA drives for a home desktop, which has 20-30% duty cycles, SAS is made to read or write data all day, every day. SATA failures are even unpredictable by comparison.

2.   Quicker throughput – SAS hard drives can read/write and process data in a fraction of the time as SATA – especially on random read/writes, and especially with the latest 12 Gbps disks making use of the most modern RAID hardware controllers. Even though SATA is good at sequential data, random IOPS are terrible.

The Final Take

Even though SATA may be fine at home, or on a cheap server, but it is just not acceptable for use by mission-critical focused hosting providers.

Are you looking for a reliable 600gb 15k SAS 3.5 hard disk drive? Contact ServerDiskDrives today!