Are SATA hard drives any better than the standard IDE hard drives. Are they worse? Are they worth the money? Are there any compatability issues? Why are they so much cheaper than IDE hard drives.
I'm looking into buying one. Probably 250 GB. Thanks for your answers.
2006-10-26 12:46:20 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
The disk itself is the same set of platters and magnets. What's different is the interface circuitry.
"Normal" IDE drives (aka PATA) can fit two drives to a bus (master/slave) and have a lower wire-speed limit.
SATA drives can only fit one drive per bus, but can move data across the bus faster.
Since the bottleneck on both systems is the physical disk (which is the same on both) there isn't (in practice) a difference between the two.
If you're seeing SATA cheaper than PATA, it's because that vendor is trying to push their SATA line and phase out their PATA production.
2006-10-26 12:57:30 · answer #1 · answered by smg 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
SATA stands for "Serial" ATA. It is an interface designed by NASA. If you want to know how much difference there is in performance... look at the specs. For example, SATA I was 150mb performance rating. Standard ATA at that time was 133. So not that much difference. SATA II which is pretty much market standard now, is 300mb transfer rate. BIG difference. There is one thing. A SATA drive will not connect to a standard ATA interface. It has a seperate kind of plug and power supply connection. So unless your mobo supports it, you are wasting your money. SATA I and SATA II do have the same interface socket.
2006-10-26 17:16:08 · answer #2 · answered by mhaize 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
SATA hard drives use different connections to IDE and because of that they achieve greater speeds in transfer. The actual speed increases are very noticable if you conduct activities with large file sizes (such as downloading movies, transferring movies between hard drives or computers etc.) but not so much for regular activities such as internet browsing.
You should also be aware that your computer requires different connections to accept SATA hard drives and you should make sure it has them before you get one. IDE hard drives use those ribbon connections whereas SATA hard drives use thinner cables. Lastly SATA hard drives also use different power connections but this is easy to create by purchasing a power connector converter thingy. They split one standard 4 hole power connection to two sata power connections.
2006-10-26 18:23:06 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
i imagine you want helping cables on the motherboard to connect a SATA puzzling disk. even if it isn't already there, you are able to attempt searching a SATA card. Alternately , in case your pc has usb port, you are able to purchase an exterior usb casing for the SATA hd, and would connect it as an exernal hd.
2016-12-05 06:38:00 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
SATA drives are more easly installed in Win XP on a new build than on a exsisting one. The difference in speed isn't all that much really. So, for ease of installation and "good" speed, stick with the IDE.
2006-10-26 16:49:01 · answer #5 · answered by mittalman53 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
in term of performance there's a slight improvement. that's what a user should know. sata is not as hot as ide when running for a long period of time. although it's a slight improvement, you can still feel the different, quite obvious.
2006-10-26 16:37:38 · answer #6 · answered by ustazshifu 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋