SATA to PATA

[Tony]

I need an answer for an un-educated question on serial ATA
hard drive connections. I have a motherboard that has SATA
ports 0 & 1 on it, but I only have PATA hard drives and
not SATA hard drives to connect to the motherboard. Is it
true that due to configuration differences between both
SATA and PATA, a 7 pin to 40 pin coupler connector doesn't
exist and I would have to connect my hard drives to the
regular EIDE connectors. Is it also true, that since my
PATA's can only run at 100MB/sec compared to the SATA's
connection that would run at 150MB/sec, that this would
also prove unsuccessful to try and interconnect the two.

 

[JBM]

I'm running 2 PATA drives with SATA to PATA
adaptors with no problems. I bought them on eBay,
If you search on google you'll probably find lots of
different choices.
They adapt a PATA drive to run on a SATA port.
Haven't found any that work the other way.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Tony" said in news:[email protected]:

I need an answer for an un-educated question on serial ATA
hard drive connections. I have a motherboard that has SATA
ports 0 & 1 on it, but I only have PATA hard drives and
not SATA hard drives to connect to the motherboard. Is it
true that due to configuration differences between both
SATA and PATA, a 7 pin to 40 pin coupler connector doesn't
exist and I would have to connect my hard drives to the
regular EIDE connectors. Is it also true, that since my
PATA's can only run at 100MB/sec compared to the SATA's
connection that would run at 150MB/sec, that this would
also prove unsuccessful to try and interconnect the two.

I'm successfully using Abit's Serillel PATA-to-SATA adapter
(http://www.abit-usa.com/technology/serillel_new.php) to connect a PATA
hard drive to a SATA port. The Abit NF7-S v2 mobo came with one
Serillel adapter along with a power adapter, too (although my Fortron
PSU already had SATA power connectors). Highpoint makes their
RocketHead converter (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/accessory.htm).

 

[Lori A. Kuiper]

I have the same Motherboard, and also have a PATA hard drive that I have
connected to the Parallel onboard controller, disabling Serial ATA & ATA
Bios in the BIOS.

Is your drive working well? What is your boot sequence? Do you still have
everything for SATA enabled in the BIOS? Are you running the NForce 3.13
drivers & did you install SATA driver when prompted?

I have been totally confused with Serial vs. Parallel ATA & which drivers I
should be using and whether I should enable SATA in BIOS. I have been
having quite a few problems even hooked up the Parallel ATA Controller.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Lori A. Kuiper" said in news:[email protected]:

Is your drive working well?

Yep. No problems yet. I have only the one hard drive, PATA, using the
converter to connect to the SATA port.

What is your boot sequence?

SATA - CD drive - floppy

Can't really look without rebooting but that's probably it. The idea is
to boot from the floppy if one is inserted, boot from CD-ROM drive if a
bootable CD is inserted, and finally boot from the SATA hard drive.

Do you still have everything for SATA enabled in the BIOS?

If you disable the SATA controller (I think it is listed as one of the
onboard/onchip PCI devices) then you can't use it.

Are you running the NForce 3.13 drivers &
did you install SATA driver when prompted?

I installed whatever would have been the then latest version of nVidia's
unified driver package back around mid-January. I did opt to use
nVidia's IDE drivers. They work and benchmarke a wee bit faster than
the Windows IDE drivers. I did check over at SiliconImage to see that
they have their own separate driver (don't remember if it was newer or
not) but decided to stick with the SI3112 driver that's included in
nVidia's unified driver package. After I get to the point where I cut a
disk image (so I can restore an exact snapshot) then I might play with
installing SiliconImage's own driver to see if it is a later version and
what, if anything, it provides. For right now, I'm still testing
different applications to see what I might decide as replacements and
figuring out how to eradicate the bugs and superfluous Windows XP
functions (more than once I wish that I still had Windows 2000 that went
with the sale of my old system).

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:42:18 -0800, "Tony"

I need an answer for an un-educated question on serial ATA
hard drive connections.

Serial ATA supports one device per "channel" (i.e. S-ATA connector),
unlike the master + slave (or cable select) scheme P-ATA uses.

Serail ATA also uses different power connectors to the HD. Your S-ATA
HD may have both S-ATA and "legacy" power connectors; you can use
either, but not boht at the same time! If you want to hot-swap S-ATA
drives, you must use the S-ATA power. If you use legacy power
connector, you must unplug PC from mains before swapping HD.

Your mobo will usually have both P-ATA and S-ATA connectors, tho it
sounds as if yours is "pure" S-ATA. If both are present, then there's
usually a CMOS setup setting to define how these relate.

"Enhanced" mode may allow all P-ATA and S-ATA to be used, but will not
be supported by Win9x. "Legacy" mode will let you use either, i.e.
one S-ATA will act as P-ATA Primary Master, etc. You can mix, but
only insofar as they don't overlap - e.g. HD on S-ATA 0, CD on
Secondary P-ATA may be OK, but S-ATA 0 + P-ATA Primary not.

In addition, your S-ATA may support RAID (typically RAID 0 or RAID 1).
If so, expect another CMOS setup setting to determine whether the
S-ATA are to be used as "normal", RAID 0, or RAID 1.

Finally, you may need additional drivers before the S-ATA works in
Windows. This applies where a 3rd-party S-ATA is added, such as a
S-ATA card, or a mobo that adds (say) a Promise RAID controller to the
existing motherboard chipset's x-ATA support.

I have a motherboard that has SATA ports 0 & 1 on it,
but I only have PATA hard drives and
not SATA hard drives to connect to the motherboard. Is it
true that due to configuration differences between both
SATA and PATA, a 7 pin to 40 pin coupler connector doesn't
exist and I would have to connect my hard drives to the
regular EIDE connectors. Is it also true, that since my
PATA's can only run at 100MB/sec compared to the SATA's
connection that would run at 150MB/sec, that this would
also prove unsuccessful to try and interconnect the two.

If connectorware works - I hear that it does - then use 80-pin P-ATA
cable (if P-ATA cable is needed) and expect UIDE100 or UIDE133 as the
max, but not UIDE150. Expect hot swapping to NOT be supported.

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" said in

Serial ATA supports one device per "channel" (i.e. S-ATA connector),
unlike the master + slave (or cable select) scheme P-ATA uses.

Depends on how SATA is implemented in the hardware. If, for example,
the Silicon Image 3112 standalone host controller is used then, yes,
each SATA drive gets its own independent channel through the controller
to the PCI bus. However, if instead the SI3610 PATA-to-SATA bridge is
used then, no, the drives really don't really get independent channels
(since they are tied to the PATA channels). Yeah, there are 2 SATA
channels but they are bridged from the PATA channels. Any drives on the
SATA channels will eventually share with whatever drives are attached to
the PATA channels. To me, independence of the SATA channels is not just
that each SATA channel is independent of the other SATA channels but
that they are also independent of the PATA channels.

There are several ways to implement SATA within the hardware despite its
spec for the interface to the hard drives, and some implementations are
much better than others. The SATA spec only dictates the interface
between the SATA controller and the drive, not between the SATA
controller and the "legacy" system (i.e., BIOS, mobo, PATA controllers,
chipset, etc.).