Ata Or Sata, external hard drive,help please Options

[simmac]

Hi everyone

I need to buy an external hard drive.I'm living in Italy,the enclosure (the best what I found ) pleiades.
The question is wich one.
ATA or SATA?????????
Makes really different for us (for music) or the ATA is more than sufficent????
And wich ATA drive???????The cache is important????
The difference of the price beetwen the ATA and SATA it's not that much.


I dont use to much of tracks,max 40.I'm composing,I'm not a sound engenier.


Thanks a lot guys

[lepetitmartien]

Well…

ATA interface works below the possibilities of FW400 (and 800 of course)
SATA is faster than both.

Now an ATA drive should support this number of tracks but it'll be easier in SATA.

ATA drives are not "dead" but it's clear the actuel future is in SATA as are the larger drives. Also, a SATA drive will seat just fine in a desktop mac later in case (I don't know what's your computer but it can be interesting).

Cache is not important as it's large files/streaming handling and cache really make a difference over small files. Now you'll have troubles to find drives with less than 8 MB of cache.

Pleiades are great but use an as silent drive as possible (Seagate, now I love these), as the alu enclosires tend to amplify any noise they make, and let them stand on something that won't add to the injury. In doubt if you can't have a Seagate, check the datasheets of the drives models on the manufacturer website, it's written in.