SG Broadband Community

Hey guys,

Trying to do my best here to fix a friends computer and i'm stuck on an issue. The computer uses an IDE hard drive which is bad. They are planning on purchasing a new custom built computer in 6 months so I think it would be best to purchase a SATA2 drive so it will work with the new computer and save them a bit of $$. This is the hard drive i'm looking at:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... re=Seagate

Now I have found an interface card that converts a SATA drive to IDE. http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... e=Addonics

My question is will this device support a SATA2 hard drive. I know SATA2 drives are backwards compatible with SATA but I dont know enough about them to determine if this drive will work with this interface card. Also, do you think there would be any noticeable speed difference using this card?

Thank you so very much guys!
Matthew

It should work fine with any SATA2 device..they'll just step down to SATA1 performance, which with a single drive isn't the bottleneck anyways.

http://www.antonline.com/p_Addonics--AD ... 229267.htm
They quote it as working with SATA1 and SATA2. Lower price too.

I haven't used this device, but for setups I have used Belkins SATA2 controller card, a PCI card, priced in the mid 30's to low 40's if I recall.

Speed difference in the current computer, you'll find a new SATA drive should appear quicker..not so much from the interface itself, but because todays hard drives perform quite a bit quicker than drives from a couple of years ago.

Wow thats so cool! So basically the card i'm looking at converts the SATA into IDE where the Belkin bypasses IDE altogether and communicates directly with the processor? Is this basically plug n play ? Would this card work in the two following situations:

1. Brand new SATA2 hard drive on a motherboard that only supports IDE, install the Belkin PCI controller, plug the hard drive in and windows setup will detect the HDD without any configuration?

2. The computer has windows installed and running fine. The hard drive is SATA2 but plugged into the motherboard with supports only SATA1. Install the Belkin PCI controller, plug the drive in, and everything works without any configuration or would you need edit the boot.ini to look to the PCI controller instead?


And many many thanks YOSC. I'm sure you hear this all the time but you have helped me out so many times and I am ever grateful for all your help.

For question 1, during Windows setup you'll have to F6 feed the controller driver.

I'm not following you on question 2....but I have quite a migraine right now....so it's probably me. Gotta retire for the night. Err..after a minute, I can't say I know for sure...but I'll guess...install driver for this controller card. Power down. Swap the SATA2 hard drive from the onboad SATA1 controller..to the new Belkin SATA2 controller. Go into computers BIOS setup and change boot order to the PCI controller card. Should boot up fine.

If I'm following this right...?

-- Your looking to get a new HD for an upcoming computer. Natrually you want to get something current rather than an older 40 pin ATA.
-- The current computer that the drive is going to go into has no native SATA headers on the mobo.
-- The new computer will of course have SATA on it and as well there is a computer in the mix right now that supports SATA 1?

So from that I'd say:

-- The old 40 pin ATA drives are not 'bad' per say. They are just old tech. They actually were quite good tech, just they have been depreciated now. Very little, if any--I can't even think of any really, tech that has reached the maturity level that the old ATA interface did is 'bad'.
-- The new SATA is backwards compatible like most hardware parts. That is to say that if you plug a SATA 2 drive into a motherboard that supports only SATA 1 the HD will fall back to use SATA 1 mode. And vice versa. There are a few caveats to that rule but they are nothing you would have to worry about for such a major component as a HD.
-- Even thou SATA is the standard most mobo's still come with one 40 pin ATA header. (Handy for a CD/DVD-ROM without using your SATA ports up on it.) So in most cases having a 'legacy' drive is not a huge deal. I don't think that your particular setup will need that just wanted to make sure we had it in the discussion.
-- Since going forward is always better rather than getting a SATA -> ATA adapter why not get a SATA card instead of and adapter that will likely have limited future use? (Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rder=PRICE)

Hope that helps!

Thanks yoshi! Much appreciated!

So here we go boys ... of course this was going to happen ... nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

-So i install the new PCI card ( http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... gies%20Inc. )
-Hook up the drive, plug everything in, fantastic!!
-Load into the windows xp setup, press F6 to install drivers, it wants to load them from a floppy ... great cannot do that as they are on a CD
-I proceed on without loading the drivers just to see if windows detects the hard drive ... and to my surprise it does ... both partitions and their sizes.
-Setup formats the hard drive, copys all the files over, and the computer restarts
-And then the lovely 'DISK BOOT FAILURE'
-So i did a bit of research and from what i can tell i need to find sata controller drivers for my motherboard.
-When reading other peoples experiences it seems that setup does not even detect their hard drive in setup and therefore they need the drivers ... but in my case the hard drive is detected.

-Would this be something more related to the BIOS? Maybe i need to do some sort of an update because it is not even detecting the controller in the BIOS.
-What does windows setup do when i give it the drivers? I mean if its detecting the HDD w/o drivers, and appears to be functioning fine during setup (ie: format, copy files) why will it not load the HDD after reboot?

Man on man ... thanks guys!
Matt

there is nothing wrong with IDE

Those ide to SATA converts are a little flaky. I would not use one.
I would not buy a new ide drive, but if i had one i would not avoid using it or replace it just to have a sata.

During windows install hit f6 (before menu) load the pci card's drivers from a floppy.

If you dont, windows wont boot .. it does not know how to read your pci card.