Add a SATA Hard drive to old comp?

[valve90210]

Hi all

I'm running out of space on my PC and want to add an extra internal hard drive (I already have 3 external drives) which I intend to move Steam over too, along with some other games etc which will give me plenty of space on my main drive.

Now, my mother board is rather aged, it's a Gigabyte 8I848P, but does have two Serial ATA ports. If I was to get a SATA II drive (probably a 750GB spin point or something) would this work with my motherboard? Obviously it would run at SATA 1 speeds not SATA 2 speeds but that would be fine.

Never having used SATA before is it as simple as IDE, ie just plug it in and away you go?

Now, the other thing is powering the drive. I think my power supply is a Tagan 480w one, (will check when I have a moment) Currently it's powering 2 hard drives, a DVD writer and my AGP graphics card, there is a spare power connector (assuming SATA drives use the same as IDE hard drives/CD drives etc) but will the power supply have enough juice to power an extra drive?

Any help/thoughts vey ery much appreciated.

Valve

 

[Baldrick1001]

The hard drive should work ok with an old sata 1 interface. The HDD won't, however, use a molex power connector, you will need a sata power to molex connector/converter such as this:


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CB-037-OK

it also looks as though your PSU has more than enough grunt - if you type "enermax power calculator" into your search engine you will find an online application that will more accurately determine your power draw.

 

[valve90210]

Cool, I could probably stretch to one of those...lol. Actually, my PSU might have SATA connectors, I know there are quite a lot of unused wires...

Edit: Just ordered myself a Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb drive. Checked out the enermax power calculator and added more things than I've actually got, to be on the safe side and it still came out at only about 300watts minimum needed, so hopefully my PSU will be fine.

Will be nice to have more internal storage space, only though now is if I have a place to actually put the drive in the case... might have to remove a CD drive tha hasn't worked fr ages and fit it in there somehow.

Do these hard drives come with a SATA lead?