are they the same type of hard drives? or are they different im pretty sure i have an IDE in my pc now and i want a new one but i dont know what else will fit into my board... im assuming i cant get a SATA drive
You would need to check your motherboard to make sure you are able to get SATA before getting the hard drive. If you have SATA I would suggest that route over IDE. IDE is actually PATA (Parallel ATA) which uses one cable for several devices. This can slow down the speed of the drive and the integrity of the drive. SATA (Serial ATA) uses one serial cable and has a faster transfer speed over the PATA. The installation of SATA is eaiser because no jumper settings are needed. There isn't a huge difference between the two, main thing would be speed. There would be big difference if your mother board isn't SATA compatible. PATA (IDE) SATA SATA Connection: You can get PCI SATA adapters but it's pointless. Hope this helps.
yep, exactly what he said. Sata is the future, several motherboard manufacturers only put one PATA (IEDE) connector on the motherboard, and many (normally 6) SATA connectors. I have 2 x 160gb SATA drives on my system, one for Windows, the other for music and software
then you can't go SATA, as he said, you can buy SATA cards to allow you to have SATA, but it isn't really any faster then PATA.. Most AM2, very few Socket A boards have sata Im not sure about Intel boards...
yeah i have a dell... im lokoing to get a new board/ pc sometime soon but i cant survive with just 60 gigs of hd space anymore its pathetic... im just goin to pick up a 250 pata/ ata and call it good for now
well, I noticed a speed bost from PATA to SATA, but maybe its just because I went from 80gb to 160gb... -_-
it's because the drive itself is faster, yes. and again size doesn't equal speed but platter density does
It's quite a difference when I compare my 2x 160GB sata and 2x 160GB IDE drives, when I copy a few files between the 2 drives. Still however this are sata 1.5 drives. Btw my board has 8 SATA 3gbps ports.
Actually speed is determined by RPM's, and connection type. PATA drives only max out at 800MB with UltraDMA 100 enabled (which most motherboards only go to UltraDMA 66) where as SATA maxes out at 1.5GB (I am talking data transfer, not drive space The data a drive can push through the better, but the RPM's make a difference with seek time and drive access time. All these factors matter when buying a hard drive, so pay attention to it
data cluster density has an impact on harddrives as does seek time and a lot of other various factors thinking in terms of RPMs alone is a big mistake.