Going SATA

[Monkey]

Quick question,
I currently have a IDE hardrive and DVD drive. They are sharing a split IDE cable and I was wondering how much performance increase I would see if I bought a SATA hardrive and SATA dvd drive?
Right now my computer seems slow and I am trying to increase its speed, mainly load times.

 

[hikaricloud]

Well, it depends on the SATA standard on your board, but you will see an okay increase in speed with a new HDD, nothing drastic.

As for the DVD drive, it depends on the speeds of the drive, but I would say that the only real reason to get a SATA drive is because of the small cable, not as much of a pain.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Going from IDE to SATA won't increase performance directly since most hard drives aren't fast enough to saturate either interface. Any increase in performance depends on the specs of the two drives not the interface they use.

The best way to improve load times is getting a SSD but good ones like the OCZ Vertex aren't cheap.

 

[Monkey]

I see, thanks for the replies.
I was wondering because on another forum someone said that if you have a optical drive and HDD hooked up on the same IDE cable that is drastically slows down and that if you upgraded to SATA you would notice an increase in speed. But if it isn't going to be to noticeable no reason to spend the $100 for an optical and HDD.

 

[synergy]

Well, I do believe that if you share an IDE cable the faster device will slow down to match the speed of the slower device. It's never recommended to have a HDD on a shared cable, even with another HDD.

 

[hikaricloud]

I make it a rule to never share an HDD on a single IDE cable with an optical. Really a personal thing. It would work, it's just not very ideal. I've had to do it in client's machines when an IDE channel went bad.

 

[Monkey]

well, the only reason I have it on one cable is because I am pretty sure my MOBO only has one IDE spot and both my drives are IDE. so I had to double up.
At least I am pretty sure that is the reason I did it, other wise I probably would not of.
I have a BIostar p43 mobo.