BleepingComputer.com: upgrading hard drive?

i would like to get a new hard drive since my old one is on its way out, however i have an IDE hard drive, and was wondering if i could buy one of those IDE to SATA converters for my pci slots, and change to a SATA hard drive since IDE are becoming obsolete, is this possible? i dont know much about hard drives, sorry.

It might just be better/cheaper to stick with IDE. I noticed that they came out with terabyte hard drive's that use IDE.

Anyway, if you really want a Sata hard drive though, yes you can buy one of those adapter's, and it should work fine for you!

yes it is pretty cheap to stay with an IDE hard drive, ive seen 160gb for like 50 dollars, and other ones at half the memory for half the price too, but SATA drives are much more faster, and i just wanted to upgrade since i was replacing it anyways. if it helps any, my computer is a hp compaq d530 cmt, with 3Ghz, and 1Gb of ram. i was told that my computer can use both IDE and S/ATA drives, but im not sure on that, any ideas?

also, memory isnt the factor here, my hard drive now is only 40gb, and i barely have half that taken up, so im not looking for something huge in memory.

The specifications only show ATA, no SATA.

hmm, ok so if i use the pci adapter for IDE to SATA, i can use that for an internal hard drive? i mean like everything else will still work right? i dont know a whole lot about doing that.

also, i made a bootable floopy for my hard drive, and ran it, and it failed the test, and the computer wouldnt restart, luckily i ran chkdsk before i restarted, but it kept saying file xxxxx is unreadable, and it kept trying to fix index $O in file 25, but couldnt, but i let it sit overnight, and it managed to make it back to windows, but i keep getting popups saying my winlogon.exe file is corrupt, and this file is corrupt and blah blah blah, so i need a new hard drive ASAP

I may be wrong (it happens a lot:)) but...

Doesn't this converter only reduce a SATA drive...down to the speed of the motherboard supported drive? Since the motherboard only supports IDE drives...won't the advantages of a SATA drive be nullified by the fact that there is no native SATA support for a SATA drive...by that motherboard?

The obvious way to go (for me) if I want to use SATA drives on a system where the motherboard doesn't support such...is to just add a PCI SATA or combo (supports SATA and PATA drives) controller card. That eliminates the motherboard controller and allows the user to benefit from SATA speeds.

I have seen various posts where users buy these converters, but it seems like a backwards step to me (if my premises are valid).

And...let us not forget about the power connection...although it seems that every SATA drive I've bought comes with a connecting cable that allows power connection to a PATA connection.

Louis

This post has been edited by hamluis: 08 October 2008 - 08:20 AM

hamluis, on Oct 8 2008, 09:18 AM, said:

im not sure what you are talking about, what is this PCI SATA? do you have a link maybe that shows what it is? is it something i could buy at like bestbuy or somewhere that would be close by?

http://cgi.ebay.com/IDE-to-SATA-Serial-ATA...id=p3286.c0.m14

this is what i was looking at, is it something different than you are talking about?

This post has been edited by dnap: 08 October 2008 - 08:34 AM

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1188562133392

Examples from Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16816124009 Combo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16816124013 SATA

Louis

well arent those things similar to the one i showed from ebay? if anything, i would probably get that best buy one since they are close and wont have to worry about shipping or anything.

i was looking for something similar to this hard drive or this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/WD1500ADFD-Western-Dig...id=p3286.c0.m14

i know in the description it doesnt mention my computer as being compatible, but im assuming thats because mine isnt SATA, but if i convert it with the PCI card, it should work right?

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-WD-Raptor-X-WD1500...id=p3286.c0.m14

or this one, it looks like it is good, and fast

I would go with the PCI card because then you're actually adding SATA ports to your computer and not fiddling with any adapter/converter strangeness.
Of course it won't be as fast as a SATA controller that's actually soldered into your motherboard since it'll be going through the PCI bus, but there's nothing you can do about that short of replacing your motherboard anyway.

arcman, on Oct 8 2008, 11:25 AM, said:

you are referring to the one you showed me from bestbuy, correct? i was thinking of going with that one as well, even though it is a little more money, ill spend a little more for better quality and functionality.

do you think that second hard drive i showed would work good using the PCI card? i just want to get all the facts before i commit to this, so i wont be stuck with a hard drive that wont work.

About the speed difference using a PCI card rather than onboard SATA, the bus speed or throughput of the PCI bus is 127MB/s, where as the transfer rate of the SATA is 300MB/s, the PATA has a transfer rate of 100MB/s, so the SATA will still be faster.

dc3, on Oct 8 2008, 01:16 PM, said:

are you saying that using the PCI card for SATA will still be slow?