Hard Drive questions

[The Old Timer]

I'm told that drives often now come in both serial & parallel versions. Is
there plugs that allow you to use either if your motherboard supports both
or if you wished to use the older sort with a new motherboard? Do newer
motherboards usually support using both sort of drives at once & is there
any problem in doing so?

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Newer motherboards usually support both types of drives. I don't know of
any adapters... yet.

 

[Rich Barry]

Most newer Motherboards will have at least one ATA/IDE connector that
will allow you to connect two devices. Hard drive or cdrom, cdrw, dvd etc.
You can also get a PCI UltraATA card which should support four more devices.
But SATA
Drives are becoming much more common and you will find more connectors for
them on todays Motherboards.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

The hard drive do not have both the SATA (serial) or PATA (parallel) on
together. You can both a SATA based hard drive or a PATA one.

Motherboards are still providing BOTH PATA and SATA connector so you can
mix/match hard drives.

There are convertors where you can convert one type of hard drive to
another. However, it is more affordable to "add" a hard drive to a PCI
slot. You can get PATA(parallel) PCI adapter or a SATA(serial) PCI adapter
for less money that the drive convertors. Also, the coresponding PCI hard
drive controllers "appear: to be more reliable than the drive "convertors".