For Newbie... EIDE & SATA

[CapeGuy]

I'm planning to do my first home-built computer and would
like to include the two 120GB EIDE HDD's that are in my
current Gateway system. However, everything I look at in
cases, etc. for a new PC specifies SATA drives only. Are
there ways to easily adapt EIDE drives to work with the
SATA interface?

 

[jacoby]

Even the latest motherboards still allow up to four ide devices.
What motherboard are looking at?

 

[CapeGuy]

Recommended to me was the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939.

 

[John R Weiss]

I'm planning to do my first home-built computer and would
like to include the two 120GB EIDE HDD's that are in my
current Gateway system. However, everything I look at in
cases, etc. for a new PC specifies SATA drives only.

AFAIK, all current motherboards that incorporate SATA also have EIDE on board.
You should be able to use both SATA and IDE/EIDE devices on any of them.

One problem you MIGHT run into, depending on the MoBo BIOS, is boot order. Make
sure you set up the BIOS appropriately if you install a second bootable HD.

 

[John R Weiss]

Recommended to me was the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939.

It took 5 seconds with Google to come up with a simple reference to answer your
question -- http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/Products/gigabyte_k8ns_ultra_939/:

The GA-K8NS Ultra-939 is a socket 939 motherboard for Athlon 64 CPUs that uses
the Nvidia nForce3 Ultra chipset. It has 4 DDR DIMM slots and supports FSB
speeds of 800 MHz. It also features integrated audio, Ultra DMA 66/100/133, 1
AGP (4x/8x) and 5 PCI slots.

There's also http://www.giga-byte.com/, from which you can find
http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/ComparisonSheet_GA-K8NS Ultra-939.htm,
which shows the "official" specs...

 

[Bob Knowlden]

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-K8NS Ultra-939.htm

The board has 2 IDE controllers, supporting up to 4 devices.

It is possible to obtain adapters that allow IDE drives to be connected to
SATA controllers:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-999-160&depa=0

but you shouldn't need to do this unless you wish to run more than 4 IDE
devices.

HTH.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Bob Davis]

| I'm planning to do my first home-built computer and would
| like to include the two 120GB EIDE HDD's that are in my
| current Gateway system. However, everything I look at in
| cases, etc. for a new PC specifies SATA drives only. Are
| there ways to easily adapt EIDE drives to work with the
| SATA interface?

You mobo will accept four IDE drives, but you should look at the drives you
have and decide if they're fast enough for your new hardware. If they are
5400-rpm drives you might look into either a SATA or PATA (IDE) upgrade.
Look for 7200-rpm or faster drives (10k and higher only available in SATA
and SCSI), and at least an 8mb buffer.

You might look into a fast SATA drive like the WD Raptor, or some lesser
performance upgrade, for your main drive (C, then attach your old drive(s)
as D: and beyond for storage.