SATA Hdd

[DevilsChild]

hey guys, need some help if you wouldnt mind.

um my mobo says "Serial ATA Connectors"
but it also says "IDE Connectors"

and i am purchasing a new 160GB Hard drive,
which type do i buy? IDE or SATA?
and another question...


If i can run SATA, does that mean i can run a Ultra ATA Hard Drive?

thanks.

 

[willsko87]

SATA

 

[DevilsChild]

oh and.

whats the difference between a HD with 8mb cache,
and one with 2mb?

thanks

 

[willsko87]

HDD Cache is pretty important. Obviously the higher the better. The cache helps speed things up. Info is sent to the cache which is much, much faster, so the rest of the system is freed up to do other things. When the HDD is ready then it gets more info from the cache.

So go the 8mb cache as its only a couple of dollars more.

 

[intercodes]

If i can run SATA, does that mean i can run a Ultra ATA Hard Drive?

Yes, you can run both of them.


Between sata and IDE, go for SATA.

 

[TheMajor]

You cannot connect an Ultra ATA (PATA) HD to your SATA controller. You moob has to support both

 

[rollincatera]

opt for the sata drive as it's transfer speeds are 50% faster than IDE drives. 2mb cache drives arent around all that much anymore, dont buy one regardless.

 

[Nubius]

and i am purchasing a new 160GB Hard drive,
which type do i buy? IDE or SATA?
and another question...

Well to better answer your question you can get both. It doesn't matter as they are two different types of connections. So you can have 2 HD's on one IDE channel, a hard drive on each SATA port for a total of 4 drives unless you have 4 SATA ports then obviously you can have more.

However the biggest thing about SATA is that it is a 150mb/sec transfer rate whereas IDE only has a max of 133mb/sec and at that you need to make sure you're buying an ATA133 drive for it to transfer that fast.

Also SATA of course has it's famous 10,000RPM hard drives, but are fairly expensive. Those things haul ass.

 

[TheMajor]

There are no ATA or SATA drives that read or write at 133 or 150MB/s, so the transfer rate of 150 or 133 is never fully used unless u have lots of HD's transferring data at the same time

 

[DevilsChild]

hmm well i got two different answers for the ultra ata, but im going to guess i cannot use them on sata connectors.

im buying it off ebay, and yer thre are alot of 2mb cache ones on there in australia, and the price difference between the two is like 20AU bux.

i just ordered a 120GB SATA 8mb cache, so thanks for the help guys!