IDE to SATA bridge - any downsides?

[MikeHunt79]

Hi, I'm trying to use a 320Gb 7100.10 SATA drive on a computer which has no SATA connectors (abit KT7A).

Are there any downsides to using one of those IDE to SATA bridge things as opposed to a SATA PCI controller card?

 

[thegoonden]

I have an IDE to USB adaptor, torn from an external drive enclosure. While it is not SATA, it is a PATA-Serial interface, much the same thing really.
It's been good as gold.
But just be canny to start with, don't dive in with resizing the bootable partition straigher away, make sure it does nice, simple reading, then a spot of writing, make sure it's happy.

If it's NTFS and you are MEGA paranoid about the contents, switch the last access logging off (using your favourite windows mangling tool). that will stop it writing back to the drive each time you read a file.

EDIT: I tell a lie, it is ESATA as well as USB, just never tried it.

 

[Werewolf]

The main downside is likely to be that the IDE to SATA bridge is likely to be slower than a PCI controller card in transfer rate, and won't support some of the things that make SATA faster in other ways (command cueing etc).