I'll add that the reasons I went to SATA are:
1. It's the new hard drive standard.
2. The cables are much smaller and nicer to work with
3. There is no longer a 3 hard drive limitation. Motherboards are now generally coming with between 4 and 9 SATA ports.
4. Other features such as NCQ and perpendicular recording (which ultimately provides higher data throughput).
5. Slightly cheaper (where I am anyway).
Ehhhhhhhhhh, maybe. Sorta. I guess.
For me the reasons why almost everyone who can should be moving to SATA boil down to just these two:
1. Every day in every way "everyone" seems to be working very hard to make it next to impossible to use an IDE device.
2. SATA cabling is just so much easier to work with!
When I was buying my (many) IDE drives, I never believed that effectively overnight all new motherboards would come with only 1 IDE connector. But now I fully expect to see motherboards with
no IDE connectors at all, maybe as soon as next year. But thankfully anyone who has IDE drives can buy a PCI Express IDE controller card which will allow them to continue to use their equipment over the next few years, correct?
No, wait! I'm wrong! You can
not do that! AFAIK there is
only one PCIe IDE controller available and it provides only 1 IDE connector. So if you have many IDE devices you need to attach, you're pretty much forced to go with a PCI bus IDE controller. But PCI slots are going to be the very next thing to disappear from motherboards, right? :roll:
It seems the only legacy connectors you can depend on finding on future motherboards are the PS/2 keyboard & mouse and the inevitable floppy drive connectors. These things are like styrofoam! I guess we'll never be rid of them.
-john, the redundant legacy dinosaur