PATA or SATA ?

T

Triolent

2[H]4U
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Jan 8, 2002
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Hey guys, I was just wondering...

I've got 160gb and 40gb drives, along with 2 optical drives (see sig).
Is it worth anything to buy serial ATA adapters and use the HDDs as serial drives?
Any advantages/disadvantages from one to the other?
Experiences?

TIA
 
An adapter can not increase your throughput speeds as the drive itself still has the same interface. I believe an adapter would only be worthwhile if you had no normal ATA connections available for some reason.


Someone please slap me if I'm wrong here.
 
Only do it if you're out of ATA connections... IMO, the convertors are troublesome... I've read too many damn threads about data corruption when ppl use the convertors on the same mobo I have, but since I have native SATA drives, I don't have the problem..
 
2 HDs + 2 Opticals.
Unless you've got >2 IDE channels, it could improve your performance depending on how you use your drives. Having more than one drive on a single PATA connection slows things down a bit, particularly on copies between drives on the same channel.
If you really only use the 160 and the 40 is just for storage/backup/etc. and don't feel the need to do direct CD to CD copies, I wouldn't bother w/ an SATA adapter. If you're using the 40 as a boot drive and have all your apps on the 160 I'd probably do it.
 
Whether it is noticeable or not, there will be some performance decline when using an adaptor like that. Any time there is a change like that, there will be some performance loss in the transition.

Also, I believe most of the adaptors are somewhat expensive. It would probably be cheaper to just buy a decent IDE PCI expansion card. You can usually pick them up for around $20-$25.
 
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