SATA drive to replace IDE?

bingojesus

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Mar 4, 2009
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Hi. New here, hope you can help.

I have an old (2002) Evesham with an Athlon XP2200+, 512 mb ram, a CD/RW IDE drive, an IDE DVD/RW drive and a (failing, I think) 100gB IDE HDD. Running XP Home.

My questions are: can I replace the existing IDE HDD with a new SATA HDD? Will I need an adaptor? Is there a limit to the capacity? Or - am I better fitting a new IDE drive, and if so am I limited to a certain size (capacity)?

It's not my primary computer any more, but if I can keep it going for a few more years it will be useful.

All advice gratefully received.

Martin
 

Ignatowski

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Feb 23, 2009
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i'd be suprised if the athlon board doesnt have sata ports already.

while you can "Adapt" a sata drive to ide you would be better off getting a pcie sata controller to run the new drive. an inexpensive one should run about $50.
using a dedicated controller with bios you will not have any drive size limit unless the controller you get has one.

 
yea my MSI neo2 i got for my system in 2003 had a SATA port so its possible. get the make and model of your motherboard and see if it has the port or not. if not i would go also recommend getting a sata controller card for you PC so you do not have to worry about hitting a size limit with current hard drives
 

shabaa

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Maximum data transfer rate on a standard 33 MHz pci buss with a 32 bit system would be 133MB/S
Switching to a sata drive may provide the potential for achieving that potential but it really would add to the cost and not provide a cost effective upgrade..... Unless cost is not an issue...
IMHO I would opt for a good ATA133 drive and it would offer about the same performance at a considerably lower cost. Just my 2 cents......