SATA or IDE?

skidro892007

skidro892007

New Member
I am purchasing a new SATA hard drive for my newly built comp. I have an old 160 gig hard drive that I want to use as well (As a slave), but it is IDE. Should I just bite the bullet and buy one that is SATA, or is IDE still ok? I figured it was more just preference, but I just wanted to ask to see other peoples opinions.
 
I run two 250gb ide drives with XP Home and Vista one on each drive along with XP Pro on one of two 500gb sata drives here. Many prefer running a sata as an OS drive. If your board has the option to choose different drives to boot from without changing the default in the bios boot order by pressing an assigned(Asus uses F8 just like Windows) you can multiboot OSs or choose one strictly for storage. (Gee? the second sata for Vista backup?)
 
skidro892007 said:
I am purchasing a new SATA hard drive for my newly built comp. I have an old 160 gig hard drive that I want to use as well (As a slave), but it is IDE. Should I just bite the bullet and buy one that is SATA, or is IDE still ok? I figured it was more just preference, but I just wanted to ask to see other peoples opinions.
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IDE is fine, but you would want to use the converter plugs for your new rig. If I were you though, I would buy a really big SATA HD, just because it's better and easier that way. =D
 
On the Asus board here it's far easier to bring one of the sata drives upto the top of the list in the boot order found in the bios. I can easily have the XP Pro installation be the default OS by using the recovery console commands of "Fixboot" and "Fixmbr". Once you have Windows running on the sata you simply set that drive as default and use the 160gb for storage or perhaps dual booting another OS like Linux or simply another version of Windows.

Originally like SCSI type drives proceeding sata these were a means of seeing faster access times with data stored on additional drives. With XP the task of using a driver disk during the installation is the one item different for that. But you boot from a drive with a faster bus then eide. In the build here the combination is working out well. With video captures and editing the additional space is welcome.
 
Thanks for the input. I think I am going to go with a big SATA. I was planning on using my IDE 160 for storage alone anyways, so that works out well.
 
With multibooting here with the two different drive types you simply have to plan ahead for the things you want to do with the system there. With the 1.4 terabytes of drive space here I have plenty of options to consider. But I also work with large files that eat drive space fast plus store a large number of varying file types until the eventual burn to removable media.
 
oo dude same thing happened to me kinda, my MOBO only had one IDE slot so i use that for the combo drives and i got an IDE >Sata converter for the HDD and plugged that into the sata port , soo just get a IDE to SATA converter . its like 14 $
 
You won't really benefit from a sata to ide converter unless you have two not one ide channels. When installing a sata on a converter or even an ATA100 ide drive on the same channel as an ATA33 optical you will see the HD slow down to the ATA33 speed. Plus the sata bus is actually more efficient then using ide channels for the most part. Sata was designed to provide a faster bus for reducuing data access time.
 
Why would anyone use a converter? I just saw 4-device PCI-slot PATA RAID controllers at COMPUSA for $29........... And that's the normal every day price.

And PC EYE, i've never owned a computer, Pre-built or otherwise that didn't have the ability to change boot priority in about 10 seconds, in fact my last 3 computers even had a hotkey at the post screen to manually CHOOSE the boot device, so that's def. not a special feature of your board.
 
heyman421 said:
And PC EYE, i've never owned a computer, Pre-built or otherwise that didn't have the ability to change boot priority in about 10 seconds, in fact my last 3 computers even had a hotkey at the post screen to manually CHOOSE the boot device, so that's def. not a special feature of your board.
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You would be surprised to see how many don't realize that option is even there. And not all boards use the same assigned key for this. That will depend on which one the manufacturer assigns there. The reference there was in regards to Asus products using the F8 key while others may have another key assigned for this like the F3 or F5 key.
 
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