SATA Help, Please

[Jack Gillis]

Please tolerate my ignorance on this.

I have two, small by today's standards, IDE drives connected to my IDE
channel 1 as master and slave. The master has two partitions. C has
Windows XP and applications and D is used for Data. The slave is for
backups and archives. I am running out of space on the slave and want
to replace it with a larger drive, perhaps 100g or so.

BTW, Channel 2 has a DVD reader and a CD Burner.

Since SATA seems the wave of the near future the replacement will
probably be a SATA. Now my questions.

1. Will I need a separate controller card for the SATA?

2. How do I connect the power to the SATA since, as I understand it,
the power connection is not the usual Molex type connector found
comming from the power supply?

Thank you very much.

 

[Semi Head]

From: (e-mail address removed) (Jack Gillis)

I have two, small by today's standards,
IDE drives connected to my IDE channel 1> as master and slave.
....
on the slave and want to replace it with
a larger drive, perhaps 100g or so.
....
1. Will I need a separate controller card
for the SATA?

You'll need a motherboard that supports SATA otherwise stick with the
IDE . Buy a Bigger one.

S_H

 

[Jack Gillis]

From: (e-mail address removed) (Jack Gillis)

I have two, small by today's standards,
IDE drives connected to my IDE channel 1> as master and slave.
....
on the slave and want to replace it with
a larger drive, perhaps 100g or so.
....
1. Will I need a separate controller card
for the SATA?

You'll need a motherboard that supports SATA otherwise stick with the
IDE . Buy a Bigger one.

S_H

Thank you. A new MB is not in the cards for a while so I will go a
looking for a bigger IDE and while I am at it will replace the ribbons
with rounded IDE cables. Have been thinking of that for while anyway.

Thanks again.

 

[BruceM]

Just get a SATA pci card to slip into the computer.
Works like a charm & then you're speced up ready for when you do update your
board one day.
All you need to do is grab yourself a SATA data cable & a SATA power
adapter. About $4 ea on Ebay.

 

[GT]

Please tolerate my ignorance on this.

I have two, small by today's standards, IDE drives connected to my IDE
channel 1 as master and slave. The master has two partitions. C has
Windows XP and applications and D is used for Data. The slave is for
backups and archives. I am running out of space on the slave and want to
replace it with a larger drive, perhaps 100g or so.

BTW, Channel 2 has a DVD reader and a CD Burner.

Since SATA seems the wave of the near future the replacement will probably
be a SATA. Now my questions.

1. Will I need a separate controller card for the SATA?

2. How do I connect the power to the SATA since, as I understand it, the
power connection is not the usual Molex type connector found comming
from the power supply?

SATA does not actually give you and more speed at the moment. The SATA
interface has the potential to transfer more data than the IDE interface,
but current hard disks are not fast enough to use the extra overhead yet. So
just replace one of your EIDE drives with a bigger one.

 

[DaveW]

Since your older computer was not originally designed to use SATA, I think
you'll have fewer overall problems if you buy another IDE harddrive. SATA
is NOT a simple install.