What is the difference between IDE, SATA and SCSI hard drives?
- Thread starter marl
- Start date
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 27 Sep 2004
- Posts
- 25,821
- Location
- Glasgow
All use different connectors, IDE is the big flat connector type that has been around for years and is common in desktop computers. SATA is the next stage with smaller connectors, only one drive per channel so no master slave designations and theoretically just a little bit faster, all new computers come with this standard now. SCSI is a bit of an odd one, it has been around for years and years, very fast (some of them anyway), expensive and requires specialised controller cards normally so it is mainly seen in servers/mainframes etc so not worth worrying about for your purposes.
You can get SATA-IDE adapters but they have a reputation for being a bit temperamental so I'd just buy a cheap PCI SATA card if you want to install SATA drives on an non-SATA compatible motherboard. I don't know offhand if your motherboard is or isn't compatible.
You can get SATA-IDE adapters but they have a reputation for being a bit temperamental so I'd just buy a cheap PCI SATA card if you want to install SATA drives on an non-SATA compatible motherboard. I don't know offhand if your motherboard is or isn't compatible.
It looks like that board doesn't support SATA drives which is a bit of a pain because IDE is on the way out - Intel is no longer putting IDE controllers into it's southbridge chipsets. That means you could get stuck with a drive that you might not be able to use in a future upgrade.
The future proof solution would be to go with a decent SATA drive and, as mentioned above, either a SATA to IDE converter or a PCI SATA card although a decent bootable card could set you back another £30-40. Alternatively go with an IDE drive (there's no real speed difference) and deal with it when it comes to upgrade time. If you end up with a board with no IDE sockets then there's always the external USB caddy option.
The future proof solution would be to go with a decent SATA drive and, as mentioned above, either a SATA to IDE converter or a PCI SATA card although a decent bootable card could set you back another £30-40. Alternatively go with an IDE drive (there's no real speed difference) and deal with it when it comes to upgrade time. If you end up with a board with no IDE sockets then there's always the external USB caddy option.