[Flashorn]

Hey Adama!! You will find all of your questions here at this link SATA en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA



And for the other part ATA which is the Formal name of IDE [http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=IDE&i=44707,00.asp]

I hope this is what your looking for (I know you have to read and it sucks, but, there explanations would probably better than mine)



FLASHORN

[smax013]

Adama said:

Ok guys, I'm going to ask a really silly question: What's a SATA and an ATA? And, what's the difference between them?

Oooops, I guess that's 2 silly questions. ?:|

ATA is Advanced Technology Attachment. It is also known as PATA (Parallel ATA) and IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics). It is the older style of connecting internal optical and hard drives. You generally use the whole master and slave bit and it typically uses a flat ribbon cable.



SATA is Serial ATA. It is the successor of ATA/PATA/IDE. It is how newer computers tend to connect internal optical and hard drives. It is capable of faster data transfer speeds.

[Adama]

Sorry for the double post. :(

[Adama]

Ok, Flashorn, here's what your link to Wikipedia has to say:

"Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA, IPA: /?se?t?/ or /?sæt?/) is a computer bus primarily designed for transfer of data between a computer and mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives.

The main advantages over the older parallel ATA interface are faster data transfer, ability to remove or add devices while operating (hot swapping), thinner cables that let air cooling work more efficiently, and more reliable operation with tighter data integrity checks.

It was designed as a successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), and is expected to eventually replace the older technology (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial cable."



!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1! And, this is what a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) looks like. Looks like the one in Snorg's pic, and I'm assuming that it just snaps into place. So, now I understand why you want a SATA instead of an ATA = SATA carries info at greater speeds. ATA is old and not so nimble any more.

Ok, I think I'm getting smarter by the minute! Or at least, trying to... LOL

[techie4fun]

Pretty much-- Sometimes they are back, too, but it all depends on the manufacturer's want for colors .

[Flashorn]

Hey Adama !! The Only way to know is to ask or see a picture with explanations

Anytime I can help. smax had it right . I don't think my explanation would have been that precise.



FLASHORN.

[coastie65]

I like that MoBo. If it is a Micro ATX, I think it will work in this eMachines box. coastie65

[snorg]

What I still need to know is
For my mobo Asus K8V-MX do I want a sata, or a sata2, or will either work?

[Adama]

Hi, Smax. I checked the other link Flashorn provided and this is what it says:

"Definition of: IDE
(1) (Integrated Development Environment) A set of programs run from a single user interface. For example, programming languages often include a text editor, compiler and debugger, which are all activated and function from a common menu.
(2) (Integrated Drive Electronics) A hardware interface widely used to connect hard disks, optical discs and tape drives to a PC. Introduced in 1986 with 20MB of storage, capacities increased a thousandfold in less than two decades. Compared to the SCSI interface, IDE has been the more economical choice.
The IDE interface is officially the AT Attachment (ATA) specification, and "IDE drives" and "ATA drives" are synonymous. The name came from the IBM PC/AT, which was the first PC to use the drives.
Built-In Electronics
The controller electronics are built into the IDE drive itself, requiring a simple circuit in the PC for connection. IDE drives were attached to earlier PCs using an IDE host adapter card. Subsequently, two Enhanced IDE (EIDE) sockets were built onto the motherboard, with each socket connecting two drives via a 40-pin ribbon cable for CD-ROMs and similar devices and an 80-wire cable for fast hard disks (see below).
Master and Slave
IDE drives are configured as master and slave. Jumper pins on the drive itself are used to set up the first drive on the cable as master and the second one, if present, as a slave."

So IDE drives, huh? That's Integrated Drive Electronics, used to connect hard discs, optical disks and tape drives to a PC. This is what it looks like.

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

I'd venture to say that the 80-pin IDE is faster than the 40-pin one. This explains why you referred to a Master and Slave bit thingy.

Thanks, Smax. I've certainly gotten my money's worth on this class today, who was started by Snorg.

Now, if I could only figure out how to answer his question about the SATA or SATA2.... :)

[rgreen4]

It does not matter. I do not think a new SATA150 drive is available any more, and the SATA300's come with a little jumper to put in place if you are going to use it as a SATA150. I have found however, that the jumper is generally unnecessary. I have two SATA300 drives installed in my NAS which has a SATA150 controller and they work just fine. I have also connected several SATA300 drives to my 4 year old HP desktop which has two SATA150 connectors (like the photo Adama posted, without the outer ring) and never put the jumpers on and have not had a problem.

For the most part, I think these devices are very resiliant. You can connect an IDE133 drive to an old IDE66 interface on an old MB and it will work. In the same vein you can connect an IDE100 HD to a new MB with IDE 133. They will connect and just use the fastest available speed.

I have connected both types of drives to one MB without problems, but never two diverse boot drives. If you wanted to change your boot drive from IDE to SATA and did not want to reinstall everything from scratch, Acronis will cone from one to another, as I have done that.

[piyushsingh]

just as rgreen said, sata 3gbps will work with older sata/150 controllers also. There isnt any speed difference between the sata 1.5gbps and 3.0gbps in the desktop environment as the bandwidth limit for sata isnt reached in any of the data transfers. I still have the jumper in my sata 3.0gbps drive in its place that is meant to be there when using on older sata controllers. The bandwidth is doubled in later sata drives but they dont reach the limit set by older sata. So i havent tried to mess with that jumper till now. Maybe in near future the different encoding algo will lead to speed difference between the two, but its just a thought.

[snorg]

Thanks for cluing everyone.
This here is the sata drive Im looking at.

It says its a 3.5 inch drive does that mean its 3.5 inches wide???
I measured an IDE drive its 4 inches wide.
My case dont have any 3.5 inch wide drive bays, it only has 4 inch wide drive bays, does that matter???

Also can someone say for sure that XP Home SP2 will pick up the sata drive & initialize, mount & partition it???

[rgreen4]

The term 3 1/2 drive means 3 1/2 class. This size drive originated with the 3 1/2 diskette (which is 3 1/2" wide), but the drive to handle it had to be wider of course, at just a small fraction under 4". Thus, any device sized to mount in slots that will take a 3 1/2" diskette drive are called 3 1/2.
In the same manner, a 5 1/4" drive is physically 5 3/4" wide which is fortunate as that allowed CD drives to fit in the same bay while using 4 5/8" wide media. This media size then dictated the size of the DVD which had to fit in the same mechanism. This same size designation also applies to 2 1/2" laptop drives which are physically 2 11/16" wide (to allow for a 2 1/2" platter I imagine).

As to installing XP on this machine - it depends. If you have SATA150 drive controllers, yes. If you have the new AHCI/Raid controller, not unless you can disable that mode in the BIOS. From the age of your machine, I would think it will do fine.

BTW: The manual may be on your driver CD for the MB (as a PDF) if not you can download it from the ASUS website. I now have a practice of always downoading the manuals to my "goodies", even before I buy, as part of my decision process. If I don't buy that particular product, then I delete the file, if I do buy that product then I create a drive folder for it and keep it there.

[snorg]

Ok on the 3.5 inches, I thought it was something like that.


I will be running the sata only as a slave, I just wanna know if XP Home SP2 will pick up the sata drive & initialize, mount & partition it???
Maybe you can look at the mobo and tell me if it will be easy.

[rgreen4]

It should. From the description of the MB and the specs on Asus's website I estimate the board is 3-5 years old. (Am I close?). Problems do crop up on recent MB's with the Advanced Host Controller Interface, specifically with the Intel 82801 Controller chip. I would advise downloading and running Belarc advisor (if you don't already have it) and look in the areas for Controllers or Bus Adapters for the letters AHCI in connection with a controller.
If it's not there, XP will recognize the drive fine (my old HP D530 circa Jan. 2004 did). If you do have it, then you will need to download the driver (if it's not on your CD) which won't be a problem since the drive is not to be a boot drive. Where many of the problems are arising is on machines that have only SATA and no floppy to install third party drivers. Remember that little message that comes up first thing on installing XP?.