Ide HDD to sata

Hector's House · 06-02-2005, 15:02

I've got an Abit an7 mboard in my pc which has onboard sata, my hdd is curently on one of the ide channels and I was thinking of moving it to one of the sata ones. Abit do 2 converters but I don't know which one I need or where to but them from but I've seen one on ebuyer for about ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…Â¡ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£4.50. Will this work just as well? If not does anyone know where I can get the abit ones from and which one I need, cos' to me it looks like either of them will do. Any help would be appreciated.

MovedGoalPosts · 06-02-2005, 15:13

I'm not sure what you have seen for ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…Â¡ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£4.50 but I think it will not be enough.

SATA drives use different power connections, and data cable connections to IDE drives. You need to be able to covert both.

A quick google found this site, which shows what you might need (not saying it's the best option.
http://granitedigital.com/catalog/pg...idgeboards.htm

By the time you've paid those sort of costs, you might as well have bought another HD and keep the existing one for backup purposes.

Hector's House · 06-02-2005, 15:17

this is what i've seen
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=60612

Halcyon · 06-02-2005, 15:18

Yeah I'd reccomend you get a SATA hard drive.
Plugging an IDE hard drive on to SATA will not really give you advantages.
If you wish, you can leave the Hard drive in there as IDE and then add a SATA drive so you have two drives.
A Sata drive will have its own much thinner data cable that plugs into the Sata connector on the motherboard and its own type of power connector.

Hector's House · 06-02-2005, 15:23

I have the data cable supplied with the mboard I thought I could plug this dongle in the back of the hdd connect the sata data cable to it but use the the normal 4 pin power connector

ZrByte · 06-02-2005, 15:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hector's House

I have the data cable supplied with the mboard I thought I could plug this dongle in the back of the hdd connect the sata data cable to it but use the the normal 4 pin power connector

You will but why would you want to? It will be no faster, infact due to the method of cable conversion it might be slower. The only real use for this would be if you had no available ide sockets.

Halcyon · 06-02-2005, 15:30

You wont see any real speed increase.

As for the power connector.... 4 pin connectors are used on IDE drives. SATA drives use a flater connector.
Be careful with SATA cables by the way, they break easily.
You can easily buy SATA to 4 Pin power connector adapters.

Why exactly do you wish to connect your IDE drive through SATA ?

Hector's House · 06-02-2005, 15:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZrByte

You will but why would you want to? It will be no faster, infact due to the method of cable conversion it might be slower. The only real use for this would be if you had no available ide sockets.

Point taken I'd not thought of it being slower, one of the reasons I was thinking of doing it is that I have a couple of other hdds (one is exactly the same make and model as the one I'm using already)floating around somewhere and I was thinking of putting one of them in as well, which would leave the ide sockets free for future expansion

Florence · 06-02-2005, 16:40

I would recomend using SATA with a SATA drive I have found this good and it has allowed me to use the IDE for trouble sorting of the childrens HDD when they mess them up beyond use...

Matth · 06-02-2005, 23:30

Wow, that cheap ebuyer one IS a SATA converter, unbelievable price.

Reasons to use a converter (or two)
1. Pair of reasonably quick IDE drives, and put them as a RAID pair on the SATA RAID (on many boards, SATA is a RAID controller).
2. Need to clear IDE cneels, maybe for two simultaneous CD/DVD writers, one per channel.
3. Want less clutter of large IDE cables.

Generally, a SATA converter will have minimal effect on the drive's performance. Unless you had two active drives on one IDE channel, or would do, the perfomance will generally not improve by moving them to SATA.

Hector's House · 07-02-2005, 17:58

Yes I have raid on my mboard and it had crossed my minf to stripe them, but wouldn't I have to reformat the drive I have in my pc now to set it up?

If I went down the sata route can anyone recommend one around the 80gb - 120gb sizewise?

SMHarman · 07-02-2005, 18:45

If you put Drive 0 in as your current data drive and want a RAID1 then put a Drive 1 in with identical specs the RAID drivers should automatically start the R1 process.

Oh and don't try putting your SATA cable into the jumper pins of the drive, it will fit but the drive will not respond

, minor panic when I tried that.

I like Maxtor drives, the MaxDrive config utility is good too. Their SATA 120Gb 8mB cache 7200RPms are pretty good value.

Hector's House · 06-04-2005, 14:18

Just in case anyone is interested, I decided to buy the converters from ebuyer and they seem to be fine.

06-04-2005, 14:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hector's House

Just in case anyone is interested, I decided to buy the converters from ebuyer and they seem to be fine.

thanks for the feedback, glad it worked out ok

zoombini · 06-04-2005, 16:41

So with that, does that mean that you can have 4 x IDE devices AND the SATA ones too?