SATA -> IDE Converter

[Keetha]

Quick Question. I want to get a WD Raptor 74gb drive, but my motherboard dosn't support SATA and I do not want to buy a SATA controller card. If I get a SATA - > IDE converter, will there be any performance dip?

[E4g1e]

Quick Question. I want to get a WD Raptor 74gb drive, but my motherboard dosn't support SATA and I do not want to buy a SATA controller card. If I get a SATA - > IDE converter, will there be any performance dip?

There are such adapters on the market, all of which include an embedded converter chip. Unfortunately, in the case of your Raptor, the adapter may decrease your drive's burst transfer rate or suffer from increased latency since that drive isn't native SATA to begin with -- multiple PATA to SATA to PATA conversions will hurt performance.

[Keetha]

Thanks eagle.

Does anyone else have any opinions or experience with this?

[Leeum]

I find the convertors making IDE drives into SATA a bottleneck aswell, I'd get a new motherboard with SATA if you want a WD Raptor.

A PCI SATA card will be limited to the maximum bandwidth of a PCI slot.

[E4g1e]

I find the convertors making IDE drives into SATA a bottleneck aswell, I'd get a new motherboard with SATA if you want a WD Raptor.

A PCI SATA card will be limited to the maximum bandwidth of a PCI slot.

True. However, there are a lot of SATA hard drives -- WD Raptors included -- that actually use IDE interfaces with SATA bridge chips onboard the drives. Don't expect the burst transfer rate of those bridged SATA drives to exceed the maximum practical burst transfer rate of the IDE interfaces on which those drives are based. (A test with the 250GB WD2500JD, posted in another thread in this forum, proved that it's really an ATA/100 drive that's bridged to SATA.)

By the way, the OP has a Socket A processor and motherboard. Unfortunately, there are very few choices in Socket A motherboards whose core-logic chipsets natively support SATA. (And most of the Socket A motherboards with SATA actually connect the SATA ports to the PCI bus, making them no better than a PCI add-in controller card.) As a result, for all practical purposes, the OP will not only have to buy a new motherboard, but will also have to buy a new CPU as well.

[Keetha]

Well, if the drive is originally an IDE, how does bridging it to SATA increase performance at all? Going from IDE -> SATA -> IDE just leaves the data back where it started. My burst transer max will only go down to 133 from 150, or something like that. Also, I was kind of misleading in my original post. I am actually getting a raptor drive from my friend (and his whole entire computer actually, he is going to Iraq). I just wanted to take the drive from the comp I get from him and switch it with my main.

[Komataguri]

Well, if the drive is originally an IDE, how does bridging it to SATA increase performance at all? Going from IDE -> SATA -> IDE just leaves the data back where it started. My burst transer max will only go down to 133 from 150, or something like that. Also, I was kind of misleading in my original post. I am actually getting a raptor drive from my friend (and his whole entire computer actually, he is going to Iraq). I just wanted to take the drive from the comp I get from him and switch it with my main.


It dosn't

All it does is save them money by jumping on a new bandwagon without doing little more than researching a translation chip that turns IDE into SATA signal.