New Sata Hard drive vs Old IDE Hard Drive

ukonlineshopping

After 7 years I am finally getting a new PC. I was planning on using Windows XP again which I have.

I see that all new PC's come ith SATA drives now, I have the old IDE type in my PC. We have masses of photos and stuff on it so was planning to put it alongside the new one. Just a few questions:

Is Win XP SP3 fully compatible with SATA drives?
Do modern motherboard allow old IDE to be connected or do I need a cable/conversion kit?
Will the SATA drive be able to "see" the other old style drive like it used to on my old PC?

Thanks

custardy

depends on the motherboard as to whether it has an IDE connection
many still do
As for XP I cant conform
I remember the prompts for F6 an sata drivers. dont know if its still the same

pcombo

Of course windows xp sp3 is compatible with sata drives.

new motherboards generally only come with 1 IDE slot now or none, but you dont really want to be using 1 cable for hard drive and cd rom.

robmar0se

Xp SP3 reads sata I or II drives just like the older ide drives (unless you use a very old motherboard).

Why not put the old IDE dive as an external drive? There are some good offers on now from Misco for Akasa IDE enclosures - http://www.misco.co.uk/product/110339/Akasa-3-5inch-Silver-IDE-Hard-Drive-Enclosure - you just connect to a USB port and you have access as though it was internal etc

prowla

As per above, I would get the new system with a SATA drive and put your old one into an external USB case. At one point systems seemed to come with SATA for hard disks and IDE for a CD/DVD drive, but now they seem to be all SATA.

Also beware that a treasured photo that is only kept on one hard drive is an accident waiting to happen - that drive will fail and you will lose it.

As soon as you can, copy it onto another drive (and maybe another too!).

Notmyrealname

ukonlineshopping wrote: »

After 7 years I am finally getting a new PC. I was planning on using Windows XP again which I have.

I see that all new PC's come ith SATA drives now, I have the old IDE type in my PC. We have masses of photos and stuff on it so was planning to put it alongside the new one. Just a few questions:

Is Win XP SP3 fully compatible with SATA drives?

Natively, no. Sorted for installing by going into the BIOS and setting it to "Compatible" or "IDE" for the SATA controller setting instead of AHCI. XP then thinks its an IDE controller and all is good with the world.

Do modern motherboard allow old IDE to be connected or do I need a cable/conversion kit?
Will the SATA drive be able to "see" the other old style drive like it used to on my old PC?

Thanks

Less and less so but the IDE to SATA adapters work OK, even the ones from PC World

poppellerant

ukonlineshopping wrote: »

After 7 years I am finally getting a new PC. I was planning on using Windows XP again which I have.

I see that all new PC's come ith SATA drives now, I have the old IDE type in my PC. We have masses of photos and stuff on it so was planning to put it alongside the new one. Just a few questions:

Is Win XP SP3 fully compatible with SATA drives?
Do modern motherboard allow old IDE to be connected or do I need a cable/conversion kit?
Will the SATA drive be able to "see" the other old style drive like it used to on my old PC?

Thanks

Yes XP is compatible with SATA drives. I would advise against changing the SATA mode to either Compatible or IDE, as either will slightly hinder the performance the drive by not allowing SATA commands, such as NCQ (Native Command Queuing), through.

The chances are that your new computer will come with 4gb or more of RAM - unless you opt for the bargain basement ones, which will probably have 1-2gb installed. In order for Windows to see 3gb of RAM or more, it needs to be 64-bit compatible - and the support for Windows XP 64-bit is nowhere near as good as it is for Windows 7. So what I'm trying to say is, you might have to strongly consider Windows 7 (64-bit) if you buy a computer with over 3gb of RAM.

Some motherboards still carry IDE ports, but the ports are becoming extinct. You can buy an IDE to SATA adaptor if you're serious about using it in your new machine. I would advise against this, since the IDE drive is going to much slower than any current SATA harddrives. As most people will know, the slowest component of a computer is quite often the hardddrive - so really using an old drive as the main drive will only hinder the computer.

If you do find a computer with an IDE port, you could use a SATA drive alongside the IDE drive, and use the SATA as the main drive to operate Windows on. This wouldn't hinder Windows as using it as the main drive.

Consider a IDE to USB adaptor - rather than swamping around inside the computer, it will likely be much easier to simply plug the power and IDE connector in, then plug into the USB.

One last thing. Most of today's surviving IDE drives will probably have a few years behind them. I would feel safer with my important data on a newer, more reliable harddrive. It's a bit like using a car with 200,000 on it's clock to tour the UK - it might get you there, but it's more liable to breakdown along the way.

mikey72

Mine run XP with sata drives with no problems. I use a USB to IDE to get data off my old drives, and keep the data on several drives for backup, as well as buring to CD/DVD.