Topic: hard drives

[Baz]

is it possible to run ide and sata drives on the same mobo. The board does have sata connections.

Ive been meaning  to get a extra drive for back up for ages and have been looking at maybe getting a removable one, you know those caddy and tray ones, and wondered if its possible to do that and still keep the original drive in which is ide, getting a new sata one for the removable.

are there many differences between the two formats. would I even benefit from a sata drive.

[Simon]

Can't answer that myself, Baz, but I expect Sandra will be in later. 

[Sandra]

Mobos with SATA and IDE do indeed run both types of drives together without any problem.

If you leave the OS on your current IDE drive then you can connect a SATA and you dont have to use jumpers to set it as a slave or master so leave the IDE drive as it is and just connect the SATA.
You may have to set the boot priority to tell it to boot from the IDE drive first.

If you decide at a later date to reinstall your OS and install it to a SATA drive then depending on how new the BIOS is in the mobo then you may need to press F6 when installing and install the SATA controller drivers which you have previoulsy got ready on a CD or a floppy.
Later mobos incorporate the SATA controller drivers in the BIOS so the installation is as normal for IDE drives.

[Baz]

thanks. Boot priority already set for the original drive so that will be ok as is? no jumpers    how does that work then. do they just self recognise one connection on the mobo. if you had two sata drives would you need to configure one as boot or is it auto.

are these Sata drives hot swap able?

[Sandra]

No jumpers on SATA drive although some do have them to limit the speed to SATA 1 or 150 as some mobos wont take a SATA 2 or 300, I havent come across any that wont personally so far.
They are hot swappable and you just set the boot drive as the one to boot first in the bios.

One good thing about SATA drives is that if you have 2 or more then you can have a different OS on each drive and set the bios to boot from the OS you use most often.
Then if you want to change to a different OS you can reboot and usually by pressing F8 you get a menu which allows you to select which drive to boot from on that occassion.
I think that this is preferable to the traditional method of dual booting.

[Baz]

great thanks sandra.......


where do you buy your gear from then, any good sites.

[Reno]

I doubt you do, but on the off chance your motherboard doesn't support sata you can get a sata controller card with the sata ports on it. I'm thinking of getting a controller card the next time I get a new hard drive, because all my onboard controller ports for both IDE and sata are filled.

[Sandra]

where do you buy your gear from then, any good sites.

I tend to use www.ebuyer.com mostly.
I always compare the price on a few sites though as amazon can be very competative as well.

[Baz]

if I were to get an external hard drive how do they connect to the mobo, especially a sata drive.

[Rik]

The mobo has to support e-SATA, there will be a special socket on the back plate if it does. Otherwise, most external HDs are in caddies with USB or Firewire interfaces.

[Baz]

so if you were wanting an external sata drive, in a caddy the mobo needs a socket on the rear plate. Can you not use them if no connector is available.

[Rik]

Many of them have a dual interface, usually SATA & USB, but if you don't have a connection for e-SATA I know of now way to use the interface.

[Sandra]

If they do the caddy type for SATA then presumably a part of it will be fastened into a 5.25 drive bay and will be permanently connected to the cables for power and data off the mobo and PSU.
The drive itself will be fastened in the removeable part so there shouldnt be a problem.
I cant say that I have seen any for sale though as most people now tend to use external USB drives instead of the caddy types.

[Rik]

Medion do an external SATA drive for their machines, Sandra, which fits into a 'dock' on the top of the case. They sell the drives separately, but only with the USB cable.

[Sandra]

Yes Rik, I had the USB version when I had my MD8800 model, the models after that had the SATA types.

I think ermmm is thinking of the old type of caddy that you fastened in a 5.25 drive bay and then removed the drive as a security measure rather than for the convenience of transferring data to a different pc as youd need a corresponding caddy for that drive in any other pc that you wanted to use it with.