Today was a continuation of our bench marking tasks of SATA drives that we need in order to replace the failing ones in the class and lab computers. Most of the hard drive we use nowadays use a SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) interface to connect to the computers’ bus. The PATA (Parallel ATA) is rapidly becoming obsolete.
Similar to different versions of USB, SATA also has different versions which support different data transfer speeds. SATA 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 theoretically have 1.5 GBps, 3 GBps and 6 GBps speeds respectively. One must always consider if the port or interface can support the transfer rate of the device to be connected to assure optimized performance while avoiding ‘bottlenecks’.
We have identified 5 computers from the class and the lab area that need to be replaced. Working in groups we tested out the replacement hard drives and identified the most promising ones using our bench marking tool. This required us to research how to service and open the brand and model of the class computers in order to gain access to the SATA and power cables and attach them to our replacement hard disk to perform the tests. I found one with a good performance which I installed as the primary or C: drive replacing the old ‘failing’ one. I started the imaging process with Acronis TrueImage but did not have enough time to finish.
Alex also shared a video of how to get into Safe Mode in Windows 10. Safe Mode boots into the Windows OS with a minimal set of drivers. This serves as a diagnostic tool to eliminate the cause of a fault in the OS, driver or hardware. I tried out two of the three methods in the video.