Two questions

[ForTheWorld]

Hello everyone this is my first time on this forum and I just have two pretty simple questions.

1. I recently purchased a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus hard drive and it has an ATA serial port. I bought the HD because it was a steal ($40.00) and it is brand new. Now this is the problem. My current computer which is crap (Pentium III 533mhz) doesn't have a ATA serial port. I wasn't exactly planning on using this HD with the computer I have now but instead I was hoping to use it on a computer that I am building in the near future. I haven't kept up on much new technology so my main question is do most newer motherboards come fitted with a ATA port? Or will I need to buy a pci card of some sort to make the connection?

2. Since I am building a second computer and keeping the 533 I currently have as a multimedia pc which will be connected to my home theatre system for mp3s, video, etc.. is there a way I can transfer the 20+ gigs of media I have from my old pc to my new one when it is built without having to burn everything to cds? I heard about some tools that might help but I haven't had the time to look into them. Is Firewire a possibility and what are some average prices?

Any replies will be greatly appreciated.

-Mark

 

[gaara]

Do you mean ATA or SATA, the whole "ATA serial" thing kinda throws me off in regards to what you are talking about.

But anyways, all new motherboards now should support both ATA-133 and Serial ATA, so that won't be a problem at all regardless of what you have.

In regards to the data transfer issue, you can invest in a network card for each computer and a router. You can set up your new PC as a network server for the other PC and set the other PC to boot from the network.

This means you can literally keep the drive on your media computer empty and easily access all files from your other computer without having to move any data around. You simply have to keep your server computer on when using the other one, and you are set.

 

[killians45]

like above, just set to file sharing, share out to the target drive (say computer name is bob, so go \\bob\c$ to browse entire drive contents. U should be able to just hook up via USB.

 

[idiotec]

In regards to the data transfer issue, you can invest in a network card for each computer and a router. You can set up your new PC as a network server for the other PC and set the other PC to boot from the network.

Your new mobo should come with ethernet built in, so you should really only have to buy a NIC for the old computer (as cheap as like $5), if it doesn't alreayd have one. If you are just connecting the two computers you could also just use a crossover cable rather than getting a router or hub. Your old computer doesn't have firewire, so thats out, it only has USB 1.0, that is slower than crap, so an ethernet connection is definately the way to go.

 

[Hybridchemistry]

If you dont want to network, but i highly recomend any way for the media PC, you could put the HDs in one comp then do xcopy in DOS, if you know what that is. But eyah, the server thingy sounds like your best bet

 

[ForTheWorld]

I will more then likely go with the server setup. Thanks for all the info everyone.

-Mark