SATA versus IDE

from WinCustomize Forums
This is a purchase I have been pondering and am have great difficulty justifying.
I have 2 Seagate hard drives right now. 1st., 80GB for my C drive that only has 16.7 being used. 2nd., 160GB for my D drive only 10GB being used.
Now why would I want to spend probably 170.00 to get 2 new SATA drives instead? More power, faster speed of course. But is this true? How much faster are the SATA drives then the IDE? Is it really worth the money?
I would love some input on this from those of you that have seen the difference first hand.
6,670 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
WOM would say no.

If they quit working, then maybe.

For home use(not business), what would be the need for extra speed?

I'd say, if it ain't broke why spend the money, but thats me.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree with WOM. My current system at work has a 150GB SATA drive and a 80GB IDE. Seriously, I don't notice a difference.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
And you're just scratching the surface of your current setup, so this would be a waste of money.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree. Transfer speed is definitely better, but not worth the upgrade unless it's from much older and much smaller hard drives.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
For home systems, stay with the IDE unless you are planning on playing alot of games that require fast speeds. But you won't see a difference unless you are using a high end processor, alot of ram, and a high end video card to use that speed.

SATA is mainly for servers. The webserver I'm working on has 2x 80GB SATA on RAID. This is where it would come more in handy. Or you use it for a inhouse file server with several people accessing it.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I got on one PC SATA 80GB with 79GB full and still works like a charm.One old PC i got IDE 40GB and 20GB full and works at half speed SATA does.On the other hand on parents PC i have a 40GB SCSI with 35GB full and goes faster than a rocket!
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Heck, I have IDE P3. Who needs speed? (Okay, I am getting a new computer with 3GHz soon, gotta go light on the money though.) Wait until you get a new computer. I see you have very little HD space used. You would be wasting MORE than $170.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well if you look at the numbers in speed you don't gain much. IDE runs at 133 and SATA runs at 150. I would stick with your current setup till it breaks!

(Meowy - go with AMD lad - save some money!)
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thank you so much all of you. I now realize it would just be a waste of money. Besides, I am also dealing with a brand new computer so even more so.

I always love it with the site when people are more then willing to share there opinions on things. It really helps people get a better idea of products and such.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm totally agreed on all above's advice. For the extreme other side of the coin, incase anyone's interested. I was running out of hard drive space, and things were getting cramped inside my computer case (about 5 year old Dell Dimension XPS) and, frankly, I was worried how hot things were getting in there especially with all the wide ribbon connectors in there.

So, I removed one of my two IDEs and added that to my kids' computer. Then I chucked the ATA controller card, installed a new SATA controller, a new SATA hard drive and put the remaining IDE drive on the SATA controller. PLUS I replaced my remaining wide ribbon connector (i.e., the onboard IDE controller ribbon shared by two CD drives) with two of those new skinny IDE cables -- so the primary and secondary didn't share a ribbon. What fun ! Seriously...

In any event, there's plenty of breathing room in there now and I have gobs of hard drive space !

FWIW, I can't say I noticed any speed difference due to switching to the SATA interface, but my bus is only 100 MHz and that probably significantly limits my potential benefits. I'll have to face it, it just seemed so geek I couldn't resist !

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Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My setup can handle 8 Ide...2 sata and 2 sata raid ....should be enough for anyone....