IDE and SATA

iamsteg · 19 May 2006 at 20:15

I currently have my OS, programs etc on an IDE drive and was wondering if I could purchase a SATA hard drive for storage (will be getting a sata drive for os/programs at a later date, need storage drive now).
Any help appreciated, cheers.

semi-pro waster · 20 May 2006 at 00:07

If you have SATA ports on your motherboard then it should be no problems to install a SATA drive alongside your existing IDE drive. You might have to install SATA drivers which you can get from your motherboard manufacturers website but other than that it is simple

ErNciLator · 20 May 2006 at 03:27

yer, should be no problems as to why not, but obviously would be hard to move OS from IDE to SATA especially if OS needs specific SATA drivers (eg RAID). But for files etc it's fine.

keyser · 20 May 2006 at 04:00

I thought both SATA and PATA use Intergrated Drive Electronics (IDE)? It's the circuit board on the drive?

semi-pro waster · 20 May 2006 at 10:45

ErNciLator said:
yer, should be no problems as to why not, but obviously would be hard to move OS from IDE to SATA especially if OS needs specific SATA drivers (eg RAID). But for files etc it's fine.

This is true, it should still be possible if you install the SATA drivers on the old IDE/PATA drive first but from the original post I didn't get the impression that was the aim anyway

keyser said:
I thought both SATA and PATA use Intergrated Drive Electronics (IDE)? It's the circuit board on the drive?

Again true but IDE was and still is commonly used to refer to any PATA drive, it is only since SATA has been released that drives are frequently known as PATA.