Hard Drives; SATA, PATA IDE?

fender

I am looking to buy a new hard drive. My current one is an IDE one.

I have a 2002 AMD machine with 60gb.

What are SATA/PATA drives? Can they be installed on my machine?

Thanks.

BillScarab

PATA stands for parallel ATA

SATA stands for Serial ATA

IDE = PATA

Sorry I'm half cut or I would be able to remember what ATA means.

If you're looking to replace an IDE drive just buy an IDE one, as large as you can afford.

A lot of people don't like Maxtor drives BTW, as they think they are unreliable. I never used to agree with this but lately I've had a couple of problems with them so it may be worth getting another brand.

IDE drives come in different speeds, the fastest are ATA 133, unless you know your motherboard definately supports this just get an ATA100 one.

Jnelhams

SATA drives are simply a different connection type to IDE, and in theory are faster and use small cables instead of big flat ide cables. (I know you can get round IDE cables too.)

It is unlikely your PC has SATA sockets on it, but you can check that by downloading BELARC (use google) and if not buy a SATA card which will convert your PC, but to be honest in a machine that old do not bother with SATA.

GreenNotM

ATA - AT Attachment --- AT was a model of IBM PC ....

You will find that an EIDE drive will fit as well - Enhanced IDE - if you see that term mentioned

IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics

Avoriaz

GreenNotM wrote:

ATA - AT Attachment --- AT was a model of IBM PC .... ..

AT = Advanced Technology so ATA = Advanced Technology Attachment

AT was Advanced Technology when it was introduced in about 1984 on the IBM PC. Oh Happy Days of DOS and command lines. Long before Windows took all the fun out of computing.

Not.:D

Kilty_2

BillScarab wrote:

A lot of people don't like Maxtor drives BTW, as they think they are unreliable. I never used to agree with this but lately I've had a couple of problems with them so it may be worth getting another brand.

IDE drives come in different speeds, the fastest are ATA 133, unless you know your motherboard definately supports this just get an ATA100 one.

Yes, Maxtor are terrible.

Seagate all the way in my opinion.

albertross_2

Seagate and Maxtor are the same company now.

IvanOpinion

Kilty wrote:

Yes, Maxtor are terrible.

Seagate all the way in my opinion.

I have had several Seagate fail on me but have never had a MAxtor fail on me .. and I hate Western Digital (I lost masses of data to them a couple of years ago .. it was meant to be my backup drive but the first time I needed to restore it gave me the birdie).

I think it is luck of the draw and you can be either lucky or unlucky. At the minute I have my faith in Toshiba and Samsung drives

Ivan

Browntoa

you need to post what make/model motherboard you have so we can tell you what it will take.if you do not know then use Belarc advisor

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

it will be on there on the right hand side of the list it produces