[hyeone]

i just bought an external hard drive(ide) case last night with a 250gb hard drive...which i found out later was a sata. i carelessly didnt see that i ordered the wrong thing.
now, whats the best route for me to take and the most stable and secure...

is it a good idea to put my original 80gig IDE into the external enclosure and put my sata drive as my primary into my pc?
my knowledge of sata drives is very little but ive heard good things about them.

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unless your motherboard supports SATA you cant put it in your computer...you might be able to get a PCI sata controller card to use the SATA externally and maybe internally...the SATA drives use different power connecters as well as different data connectors then the IDE drives...cant put the IDE drive in the external case...SATA drives are faster than IDE drives...hope that covers it all for you

[happyrock]

unless your motherboard supports SATA you cant put it in your computer...you might be able to get a PCI sata controller card to use the SATA externally and maybe internally...the SATA drives use different power connecters as well as different data connectors then the IDE drives...cant put the IDE drive in the external case...SATA drives are faster than IDE drives...hope that covers it all for you

[happyrock]

unless your motherboard supports SATA you cant put it in your computer...you might be able to get a PCI sata controller card to use the SATA externally and maybe internally...the SATA drives use different power connecters as well as different data connectors then the IDE drives...cant put the IDE drive in the external case...SATA drives are faster than IDE drives...hope that covers it all for you

[hyeone]

my fault, i should have told you that im a pc tech lol. i know how they work and what they need but i just wanted to find out which will the most secure way so i wont lose my data.

are internal sata hd's dependable?

and my mb has a sata slot.

[WinCrazy]

It looks like you could do any of several things:

1) Exchange the SATA drive for an IDE drive. Prices should be comparable. This is probably the most hassle-free to do. Apparently there's no such animal as an external case for SATA drives. This will have to change given some time.

2) Install the new drive on the motherboard and "clone" the IDE drive's contents to the SATA drive. Boot off the SATA drive from then on. I've never tried cloning to a new drive type but a Windows program should be able to do this. Copy important files from the old drive to the new. Then, wipe the old drive and install it into the new enclosure.

3) Install the SATA drive into the computer and reinstall Windows onto it. Copy any files you want from the old drive to the new drive. Then, wipe the old drive and install it into the new enclosure.

4) Return the external enclosure. Install the new drive as a slave onto the motherboard.

Only the first option leaves you with a large capacity drive with portability. I assume this was important since you bought an external case.

Installing the SATA drive onto the motherboard will provide you with a drive thats faster than an IDE drive and much faster than an IDE drive in an external enclosure.

[hyeone]

awesome thanks.
reliability wise, how do sata drives compare to ide drives?

[WinCrazy]

Reliability mostly has to do with drive mechanics, not the electronics, so they are the same.

[Mr.Chow]

I never really belived this but i see where trhe person was coming from.

IDE calbles are very reliabe ! Basically no errors what so ever.

SATA throws the data around almost like throwing a box of information around. Yes it can get to the other end but data can suffer, and errors would have a better chance of getting damaged.

I am a happy owner of a SATA Hard Drive. I have not had any problems with mine. SO i think they are great ! But some people think other wise. For me i like to hear both sides of the story when buying somthing on a computer. SPecially when im not familiar with it.

[happyrock]

the sata drives eliminate crosstalk that can happen on IDE ribbon cables and they can move the data faster.... and the cables dont block the airflow in the case as bad ..as for relibility they are at least as good as IDE drives...they are the future of harddrives...the newest SATA 2 or 3G as they are sometimes called are even faster