SATA to ATA

J

J. Clarke

liz said:
Hello,
I am seeking advice. I currently have an Intel D845GEBV2 mb with a 40
gig hd. I am planing on converting some home videos to dvd so I bought
a Hitachi Deskstar 250 GB SATA hd. to give me some space for the
conversions. I am no hardware wiz and I did not realize that my
motherboard does not support SATA. I cannot return the drive and would
still like to make the 250 gig my main drive. I am looking for the next
best solution. I'd prefer not to purchase another motherboard b/c of
$$ and I would like to continue to use my current ATA drive as a data
backup. Am I better off getting a 2 Port Serial ATA RAID PCI Card to
fit into one of the slots or get a SATA to IDE/ATAPI Converter? Any
ideas?

I'd go with the PCI board. The converter has an IDE to SATA bridge chip on
it and your drive has another one (last I heard Seagate was the only
manufacturer to use native SATA--the rest use bridge chips) so you have the
signal going from ATA to a bridge chip to SATA to another bridge chip and
back to ATA. While that can work well enough, if you have one brand of
bridge chip on the drive and another on the converter they may not work and
play well together, especially if one of them is an early model. Since the
price of the PCI board and the price of the converter are about the same,
the PCI board seems to me to be the safer bet.
 
L

liz hope

Hello,
I am seeking advice. I currently have an Intel D845GEBV2 mb with a 40
gig hd. I am planing on converting some home videos to dvd so I bought
a Hitachi Deskstar 250 GB SATA hd. to give me some space for the
conversions. I am no hardware wiz and I did not realize that my
motherboard does not support SATA. I cannot return the drive and would
still like to make the 250 gig my main drive. I am looking for the next
best solution. I'd prefer not to purchase another motherboard b/c of
$$ and I would like to continue to use my current ATA drive as a data
backup. Am I better off getting a 2 Port Serial ATA RAID PCI Card to
fit into one of the slots or get a SATA to IDE/ATAPI Converter? Any
ideas?

Thanks.
 
L

liz hope

Thanks for the advise. I have no experience with an IDE to SATA bridge,
will it act just like the already existing IDE interface? Will it
override the existing IDE interface or will I be able to use my current
ATA drive and the new SATA drive together? Will I be able to use the
SATA drive as my bootup drive?

Thanks for input.
 
J

J. Clarke

liz said:
Thanks for the advise. I have no experience with an IDE to SATA bridge,
will it act just like the already existing IDE interface? Will it
override the existing IDE interface or will I be able to use my current
ATA drive and the new SATA drive together? Will I be able to use the
SATA drive as my bootup drive?

You connect the bridge to the SATA drive and then connect to the bridge just
like it was another IDE drive.
 
L

liz hope

Thanks again J. Clarke.
Does the brand of bridge matter or will they all have more or less the
same performance?
 
J

J. Clarke

liz said:
Thanks again J. Clarke.
Does the brand of bridge matter or will they all have more or less the
same performance?

What matters is the chipset on the bridge--it should be the same brand and
the same series as the one on the disk.
 
F

Folkert Rienstra

J. Clarke said:
What matters is the chipset on the bridge--it should be the same brand and
the same series as the one on the disk.

As if you have much choice in picking one.
 
I

Ian East

Thanks again J. Clarke.
Does the brand of bridge matter or will they all have more or less the
same performance?

The only model of this I've ever seen (and I've been searching a
while) are the same as the ones they sell on e-bay. Search for
"Serial ATA to IDE bridge" to find it. It has a JMicron JM20330
chipset.
 
D

dg

Did you understand that the guy recommended a PCI card and NOT a bridge?
His reasons seem to be valid, if you use a bridge you are converting ATA to
SATA and then on the drive there is another conversion from SATA back to
ATA.

Whatever you choose, it will likely work just fine, however I do like the
idea of not doing so many conversions. Having said that, I am not 100% sure
some PCI cards don't also use an ATA-SATA bridge chip.

--Dan
 

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