IDE or SATA.. that is the question

[scottatwittenberg]

ok.. I just recently built myself a computer from some parts in the "graveyard" at work.. its a 1.8ghz p4 / 2x 64mb RDRAM / intel board.. so this thing doesn't have sata on it.. but, it supports my 250gb hard drive..

my main comptuer is a shuttle, and it has 2x 160gb drives.. i was using the 250 in an external enclosure and it just crapped out on me one day.. i have since tried other hard drives in that enclosure and they work.. but i just can't rely on it 24/7 like i want to..

so.. i made this fileserver.. no sata.. practically no ram that is hard to find, but it lets me access my hdd fast enough.. so its all good..

back to the question.. should i just get the cheapest $/gb IDE drive i can, or get sata and an adapter card? are there motherboards coming out or out already that just plain don't support IDE anymore?

 

[IanG]

There's very little real world difference between ata and sata. Additionally, the sata card would be on a pci bus which has a max throughput of 133MB/sec, which is as fast as the highest ide speed. Bottom line: go with ide, it'll be cheaper to boot.

Intel is trying to kill off ata as fast as it can. Their ICH7 southbridge only supported 1 channel (two deivce) and the newest southbridge doesn't have any ata support. Most mobo manufacturers are including an add-in chip to provide at least one channel though.

On the AMD side, some of the latest nvidia chipsets only have one ide channel, I think the ati chipsets still have two.

Even if mobo makers stopped putting any ide ports on their boards today you could still use the drive in an external usb or firewire enclosure, or get a pata->sata adapter.