Associate
Hi,
I have a few questions regarding SATA vs. IDE, and thought I would ask here as I can't seem to find a definitive answer via searching (unless I'm missing something). Can't make up my mind really about it all.
I am looking to get a new HDD, as the one I currently have I want to use in a set-up in my arcade machine at some point. I currently use a 120GB Seagate Barracuda IDE model plugged into an Abit AV8 with an Opteron 146 running Win98SE (yeah I know i'm a bit behind on the operating system but it's done me fine for years until now, it's just starting to look like needing to be reinstalled!
).
I was looking at getting another 120GB, possibly 160GB IDE but then I saw the SATA (I presume they are all SATA II drives now) drives and thought I might be better off with one of those. Thing is, are they as easy to install Windows on as IDE? I mean just plug in and go - i'll be putting on Windows XP now. I know I can make it NTFS and all that, but will I really see a speed difference? I play the odd game (very) occasionally, but I do use it to watch avi files and more than anything else I use a lot of emulators on it. I presume by what I read that these SATA II drives are backwards compatible with SATA I so I can use it on my current set-up and also keep it if I upgrade the boards, etc?
Many thanks
I have a few questions regarding SATA vs. IDE, and thought I would ask here as I can't seem to find a definitive answer via searching (unless I'm missing something). Can't make up my mind really about it all.
I am looking to get a new HDD, as the one I currently have I want to use in a set-up in my arcade machine at some point. I currently use a 120GB Seagate Barracuda IDE model plugged into an Abit AV8 with an Opteron 146 running Win98SE (yeah I know i'm a bit behind on the operating system but it's done me fine for years until now, it's just starting to look like needing to be reinstalled!
).I was looking at getting another 120GB, possibly 160GB IDE but then I saw the SATA (I presume they are all SATA II drives now) drives and thought I might be better off with one of those. Thing is, are they as easy to install Windows on as IDE? I mean just plug in and go - i'll be putting on Windows XP now. I know I can make it NTFS and all that, but will I really see a speed difference? I play the odd game (very) occasionally, but I do use it to watch avi files and more than anything else I use a lot of emulators on it. I presume by what I read that these SATA II drives are backwards compatible with SATA I so I can use it on my current set-up and also keep it if I upgrade the boards, etc?
Many thanks
? Also, it says to boot from the "Onchip SATA raid", by this I assume it means it can handle both a SATA set-up and a RAID array?