PATA and Ultra ATA/100?

Question

I have a new Seagate 160GB HDD that's marked Ultra ATA/100. What does Ultra ATA/100 mean? Is Ultra ATA the same as IDE?

Are PATA and IDE storage devices the same? Do the have the same connectors for the mobo?

Can I connect this Ultra ATA/100 HDD to a mother board that supports only PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices? I'm looking at the: ABIT AN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

If I keep the Seagate HDD, I need a mother board that will support an Ultra ATA/100 HDD. What does the mother board specs need to say in this case?

Or should I just return the Ultra ATA/100 HDD (unopened) and buy a new SATA HDD?

I'm in the process of buying the necessary hardware and software to build my first computer and it doesn't have to be superfast.....I'm not a gamer. I do however want to use this new computer to convert family VHS and 8mm tapes to DVD with this computer.

Answer 1

the short answer is the HD you have will connect to the motherboard you have.

the long answer is that there are 2 standards of connectors

Sata = Serial ATA
Pata = Parallel ATA used to be called only ATA before the pata was introduced few years ago.

device that is not clearly marked sata is most probably pata.

[edit]

the best speed of read and write you will get from sata 2 which is 300 MB/S.

A good solution will be to connect 2 HDD in what is called raid 0 (striping)

Answer 2

PATA and IDE are the same.

Ultra ATA or ATA 100 refers to the maximum burst speed the device is capable of.

Ultra ATA is capable of speeds up 133MB a second, whereas ATA 100 is only capable of speeds up to 100MB per second.

The motherboard you listed is a very good make, and will take any of the drives you listed above.

If HDD speed is your main concern, you may wish to consider using a RAID array. I believe the motherboard you mentioned also supports RAID.

Answer 3

SATA / ATA is the fastest component to boot SCSI (in uncomplicated phrases contemporary in servers). SATA is a small wire about 0.5 an inch for the time of. it has a small connector. its a lot swifter than IDE. IDE on the different hand is the ribbon cable. its a bunch of wires about 2in for the time of. the connector is likewise about 2in for the time of. wish this allows!