Mixing SATA and IDE drives

[Good Companion]

I just picked up a new i3 CPU, Gigabyte MB, ram and a 750 GB SATA 2 hard drive. I have a 120 GB and a 160 GB IDE hard drive from the old system. I've purchased the IDE to SATA adapter and plan to use at least 2 of the 3 drives.

My preference would be use the IDE drive for my OS, as it is currently less than half full. That would leave the entire SATA drive for data. From a bandwidth perspective, am I really throttling my system if I were to do so.

Also, any potential pitfalls to mixing the two types of drives?

TIA!

[osprey4]

First, I have seen many posts where those IDE to SATA adapters just don't work. But even if they do, I wouldn't suggest putting the OS on the slower of your drive options.

[Steve R Jones]

I would put the OS on the drive that is less likely to die - aka the newest drive.

Instead of an adaptor - get a PCI Controller card that supports IDE drives.

[Good Companion]

Thanks guys for the quick response. Admittedly, I didn't search for the success rate on the adapters, so I'm hoping I didn't just waste money.

On the PCI controller card, I tried that to convert an old PC into a server with more than 4 drives - and it didn't work. In fact, it worked interrmittently, which was even worse than DOA. If I could find a PCI controller card that works, I'd be all over it.

[TheCrazGod]

There aren't any problems with mixing the two; I do it all the time. There are a few important considerations when it comes to hard drives. These are:

1. Interface speed
2. Access time
3. Rotational speed
4. Cache size

Each of these vary for both IDE (PATA) and Serial (SATA) drives.

The ideal setup would be to have your Operating System (OS), specifically your hive (Registry) on the fastest drive. The drive with your OS is the one that will be accessed the most. If this drive is slower then all of your PC operations will be impacted by this bottleneck.

1. The interface speeds determines the speed at which data can be transferred to and from the device via the interfacing connection. The most common interface speeds are as follows:

PATA transfers at 100MB/Sec (ATA100) or 133MB/Sec (ATA133)
SATA transfers at 150MB/sec (SATA I) or 300MB/sec (SATA II)

2. The access time is the amount of time, typically measured in milliseconds, required for spinning-up the hard drive platter, seeking specific data, and transferring the data to the Instruction Control Unit (ICU). Newer drives on the market can achieve incredible seek times although they aren't quite cost effective yet, in my opinion. The new Solid State Drives (SSD) for example offer seek times that are fractions of the seek times of conventional HDDs. I found one benchmark online that shows the following:

Raptor 32GB: 7.1ms
Velociraptor 32 GB part: 5.9ms
MemoRight GT SSD: 0.22ms

3. The Rotational speed also plays a factor in the overall "speed" of the drive. The three most common speeds on the personal consumer market today, measured in revolutions per minute (RPM) are 5400RPM, 7200RPM, and 10000RPM.

PATA rotational speeds are: 4200, 5400, or 7200 RPM.
SATA rotational speeds are: 5400, 7200, or 10000 RPM.

4. The cache is also a consideration. The cache size on a hard drive varies from 2MB to 64MB. The cache is used to store information that the drive commonly uses to achieve quicker return times. I've seen many sites online that say that the size of the cache is irrelevant but this is not true. The higher the cache the better is the best way to approach it. It is only in the higher size drives that the different cache amounts see large pricing differences. If the rotational speed, and interface speeds are the same then the impact of a 32MB versus a 64MB cache will be not be noticed too much in a drive used for data storage. When being considered for a root drive, or a drive containing an Operating System, the difference most certainly can be noticed.

Now that I have written a novella, I'll answer your question. You should determine what type of drives you have. If your SATA are type 1 and your IDE is ATA 133 then it won't matter much because there will be very little difference between the speeds (133MB/Sec vs. 150MB/Sec) even though the SATA would still be a little faster (17MB/Sec faster) . If your SATA is type 2 (and the port on your PC can handle SATA II) then the 300MB/Sec it offers will be twice as fast as the 133MB/Sec offered by your PATA drive and you would be better to move your data around and install your OS on the SATA II drive. Using the PATA drive as your data drive would mean slower read/write times for your data but it is more important to have your OS on the fastest drive possible. If you have two Serial drives, you may want to consider just using those two although, in my opinion, I would rather have PATA than nothing. I still use PATA drives and although they are slightly slower, they are still very useful. I use PATA (ATA133) in one of my Media Center PC and have no problems recording HD video to it so despite being slower, it isn't obsolete ... yet. Hope this helps .

~TCG

[stroyal]

PCI controller cards, are generally very dependable. they are pretty matured technology.
I have found a few that where picky to get going, but my experience is they have always worked.

It is a rare drive that will go over 100 mbps, I know, I know SATAII interface is 300mbps, but no one told the mechanical parts, and they would have to turn 30,000RPM or more to transfer data at those speeds

So no chocking, unless it is the SATA being converted to IDE, not sure if they do that anymore.

You can't take advantage of those high speeds, unless you are using SSDs

I have at least 3 cards in operation on my computers.
Can't remember brands, but they are all good brand names.

I'll check NewEgg.
You can get all IDE, or Half IDE/SATA.
Dose, your board have any IDE, or just SATA?

[stroyal]

This is the cheapest brand name on this list.And probably the only one that is IDE and a Good brand.
I have at least 1 of these/4 IDE driver/Bootable,and RAID
Newegg.com - HighPoint RocketRAID 454 PCI IDE Controller Card
Here is the whole list.
Newegg.com - PCI Card, IDE Controller, Controller Card, RAID Card, ATA Card, SATA Card, RAID Controller

[ShyguyXPC]

basically what everyone is more or less saying, use your new SATA II drive for your OS, and the 2 older IDE drives for your Data Drives.

if your new Motherboard doesn't have and IDE connector, which would be odd, considering most now days still have at least 1 connector (2 devices), then you'll want to use a PCI or PCI express Drive controller card with 1 IDE connector on it, at least.

otherwise, if the motherboard does have an IDE connector, use the motherboards connector for the IDE drives, and see if you can use SATA based Optical drives instead of IDE/PATA based. Free's up the IDE connector for the hard drives.

[Good Companion]

Once again, thanks for the great advice. The motherboard has one IDE connector and 6 (I think) SATA II connectors. I'm thinking that I use the SATA drive for my OS, unless it's SATA I (which I hope it's not).

I'll probably try out the adaptors by connecting my DVD burner to one of them, freeing up the IDE connector for the hard drives. If the adaptors don't work, I'll probably just buy a SATA burner.