captain_slinky: (Default)
captain_slinky ([personal profile] captain_slinky) wrote2008-04-14 10:42 am

Technical Note

Did you know that an EIDE Hard Drive and a SATA hard Drive are completely different, and you actually need a SATA Motherboard to use a SATA hard Drive?

Well now I know!

Seriously, when I bought the silly thing I thought it was just some silly proprietary bit of title work, no more important than the words "Seagate" or "Western Digital". I had no idea that it meant a completely different type of hook-up.

So now I have a box full of half-a-terabyte mocking me, making me wish I had known what the heck a SATA was. And now I have to decide... take it back and swap for a smaller, more expensive EIDE drive? Or buy a $30 SATA enclosure? 'Twould be nice to have 500GB of storage in a portable USB device... but I've had problems in the past burning data off of a USB storage device on to DVD.

Any suggestions?

[identity profile] rogh-sensei.livejournal.com 2008-04-14 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Holy God, Slink. Shell out for a SATA-capable Motherboard and get it over with. And while you're at it, make sure it's got PCI-Express connections for your new video card.
COMPUTER MAKEOVER YAY!

If this is not financially feasible (And I have the names of some very good and reliable online stores) then the SATA enclosure is far superior to the EIDE HD.

[identity profile] hallerlake.livejournal.com 2008-04-14 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Get the enclosure (and spring for Firewire if you can, it's tons more reliable as far as transfer rate vis a vis USB2) - adaptors are rather hit or miss from my perspective.

[identity profile] collisions.livejournal.com 2008-04-15 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
This may not be helpful, but I have 2X 160GB IDE drives that I used to use before I put in SATA ones. Don't know what you are trying to accomplish in general, but 320GB of storage may help.

If you are interested, let me know.