Looks like Serial ATA is bringing even more benefits of SCSI technology to we consumers, namely a new industry-standard Native Command Queuing (NCQ) technology that we’ll first get a taste of in Seagate’s new Barracuda 7200.7. What makes NCQ drives so interesting are their ability to more efficiently cache requests for data from the CPU, effectively providing more data with less spins of their platters, meaning they are not only faster, but should also lead to longer-lived drives. PCWorld has some of the first information about the technology, although no benchmarks yet. Unfortunately, it’s pretty safe to say that unless you want to drop a bunch of money to be on the cutting edge, you won’t be using NCQ drives for a while. It’s not that the drives are that much more expensive—Seagate is saying about $5 more for now, that will fall away to negligible increases soon—but that most modern SATA hardware and motherboards aren’t equipped to utilize the drives. Still, as anyone who has been around me during the First through Sixth Hard Drive Calamities will know, anything that lessens the chance of a crashed drive makes me a happy man. (Thanks, Daniel!)
Read [PCWorld]
