Hi,

On several websites I've read that IDE and ATA are the same, but I have some doubts.

Is it possible to run an ATA harddisk on an older computer, or in another case, to use and old IDE harddisk with a new ATA-supporting Pentium 4 motherboard?

I have no idea of either description when I see it at a store.

In one case I have an older Seagate 40 GB harddisk on an older motherboard. Can I go out and buy an ATA harddisk of 80 GB and add it to the computer?

In another case, can an old harddisk (Western Digital, 20 GB) still be used when changing to a Pentium 4 ATA-supporting motherboard?

What is the difference between IDE and ATA and do they use the old cables or have new cables to be bought (e.g. with less or more connection pins)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Magdalena

There was a time when hard drives had a seperate controller card that you plugged into the motherboard.

As time passed the powers that were decided it made more sense to integrate the controller with the hard drive itself. That is the circuit board you see on the underside of todays hard drives and they called that technology Integrated Drive Electronics or IDE for short.

ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. A technology that attaches (integrates) the controller on the disk drive itself.

Yep. Basiclly two names for the same technology.

As long as your BIOS and OS will support the size drive you are looking at, IDE drives are ATA drives, thus interchangable.

There are 40 conductor and 80 conductor cables for your HDD. 80 conductor being the newer technology. The difference is the extra 40 conductors on an 80 conductor cable are extra grounding wires. You can use 80 conductor cables on both older and newer drives making them the logical choice when installing a drive.

Hope that helps... :)

Steve,

is there a difference about SATA and regular ATA drives?

Can a IDE/ Ultra DMA harddrive be used in a newer computer?

Is it advertised if they have 80-pin or 40-pin connectors and...which are better? (I suppose the 80-pin ones, as they are newer). :confused:

Magdalena

Yes there is a difference. The common ATA/IDE drives are considered Parallel-ATA while the newer SATA is considered Serial-ATA. The difference being the type of cable used and transfer speed. SATA connects to the motherboard with a 4 conductor cable (mimimum) instead of the 40/80 conductor cables of the (P)ATA drives and has a transfer rate of up to 150MB/sec as compared to the 66-100MB/sec of the PATA drives.
Can a IDE/ Ultra DMA harddrive be used in a newer computer?
Yes.

So that means that only the cables are different between the regular ATA and Serial ATA. But I still cannot understand how the old harddisk will work with new computers. Because the new computers have, for example, SATA RAID (whatever that is). I mean, if the new motherboard is for SATA, then the connection cables have a lot less pins. Are there adaptor cables for the old drives or how does it work?

Your help is very much appreciated. :)

Some of the newer motherboards have both PATA and SATA connections. Some have PATA only.

There are no SATA to PATA adaptors (or vis-versa) that I know of.

How can I see that the new motherboard I'm looking at (Probably one from ASUS) will support PATA?

Or do all motherboards of the new age support both serial and parallel ATA?


I can use software, but I don't know much about hardware. :rolleyes:

I've never seen a new motherboard that doesn't support PATA. It's SATA that may be missing.

The way to tell is to look at the documentation for the motherboard. They will advertise SATA capability if it is there.

I found some specifications:


IDE
Supported Devices 2

Hard Drive Types
ATA/33
ATA/66
ATA/100

Does this mean the motherboard only works with regular ATA (IDE) drives?

From the info you've provided, yes. It doesn't support SATA. Which motherboard are you looking at?

I'm looking at an ASUS P4P800E Deluxe. Because it has 5 PCI slots. A lot of new boards don't have that many PCI slots anymore, but I find them still essential, especially as a lot of things (Soundcard, DSL Modem...) still need PCI.

So this board will run with the older 20 GB Western Digital harddisk, too?

That's a very nice motherboard. It will work with your hard drive just fine. You will note HERE (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-492&depa=0) that it also has SATA capability which provides a nice upgrade path.

Thanks for your help, Steve. :)

If I have more questions I'll check back here.

You're welcome. Stop by anytime... :)

Thanks for allowing me here, Steve. And what a great Web site. I admire and congratulate you for this outstanding work.

My first question is about the SATA issue raised by Magdalena.
I was looking at the Asus board he/she bought and I see several HD onboard connectors: 1 blue (on the left side) and 3 on the right (1 blue + 2 black).

Does that mean up 4 SATA HDs can be connected to this mainboard? And what about CD-ROMs and CD/DVD burners? Can a CD burner, for example, be connected with an HD on one SATA port or is everything connected separately (1 storage device per port)? (In other words, is the "slave/master" configuration history? I hope it is)

Also, I only see 4 connectors on the board (link you posted), but the "Detailed Specifications" table at the bottom of the page mentions: 3 IDE, 4 SATA, and 1 RAID. I don't understand that. I can only assume that a port takes all kinds of HD interfaces (IDE, SATA, RAID, etc).

Thanks a lot,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/benyoucefhebboulmusic.htm

Hello Composer,

You're certainly allowed to be here, but it is by the good graces of IXL, the owner of the site, not me.

Just to get you off on the right foot, I would like to point out that spam isn't allowed here. Maybe you should advertise your site elsewhere.

Mods notified.

Welcome, Composer.

Steve... thanks for keeping the ready eye out for spam. We DO get an awful lot of it here!

A single link to a personal web site is fine, as long as thread responses are on topic, as this one is. Composer, I recommend putting that link in your signature line.

c

Where to start...

Yes, you can attach 4 SATA devices to this motherboard, but not to the connectors you're looking at. Those are P-ATA connectors, except for the furthest one to the right, under the ATX power connector - that's the floppy drive connection. The SATA connectors are small and black; two of them are just above and to the right of the CMOS battery, while the other two are above the P-ATA connector (these are the ones on the Promise 20378 RAID controller). I'm looking at the second picture of the motherboard

To my knowledge, there's no such thing as a SATA optical drive, only HDD's.

SATA only supports one drive per connection - no master/slave configuration.

No, one port does not take all kinds of HDD interfaces (as I think what I've said so far makes clear). And RAID isn't a HDD interface; it's a way of using more than one drive together for one purpose or another ( examples: the same data written to two drives for protection against data corruption, or splitting the data and having part of it written to one drive and part to another simultaneously for speed). It can work with SATA or P-ATA.

I think I've answered all your questions, although based on the questions asked I bet you might have some more. :)

And don't think Steve is a bad guy - he's far from it. We just have a real problem with people signing up and posting spam advertising messages, so we're kind of sensitive to newcomers posting links. Welcome to the forums! :)

And don't think Steve is a bad guy - he's far from it.
Heh heh, was I coming across a little cranky? Thanks for the kind words Chris.

There is just something not right with Composer's post. I got the feeling the whole thing was just to get that site noticed. First post. Bringing up an old thread. I don't know, maybe I'm just getting cynical.

We'll see if Composer posts back. If he really is interested in that mobo and a discussion of ata and sata drives, I'd be happy to oblige. He had pretty good questions.

There's just something about that post...

Thanks for you responses, especially Chris who actually answered my question, or part of it.

As for my music Web page, it is far from being what all the responses implied it to be. There is obviously a mass misunderstanding of the definition of the word "spam" nowadays:

Definition according to Merriam Webster dictionary:

"Date: 1994. Unsolicited usually commercial E-mail sent to a large number of addresses"

The definition is self explanatory, but I still feel the need to prove that my intention in coming here was not to "spam" you or anyone else:

1. I have not "actually" sent E-mail to a large number of addresses, therefore it is not "spam".

2. There is no "commercial" connotation to the contents of the link I inserted. "Advertisement", on the other hand, does have commercial implications. Since I am not selling any product through the link I inserted, it is therefore not advertisement, thus not "spam"

3. Just like users inserting pictures and logos to ID themselves (although it's not always their actual faces or own work one is looking at or enjoying), a link such as the one I inserted, represents my online ID. Moreover, it is actual, individual, personal work I am trying to share with an Internet audience. Simply that, and no more.

4. As far as I know and am concerned, instrumental music has never been "spam" (one can argue that lyrical music can be however, because of the nature of the words being used in a song or the meaning conveyed by them sometimes. Example: lyrical music for TV/Radio commercials, whose sole intent is advertising for the purpose of selling a product; also known as "jingles")

5. Assuming it is indeed spam: I would rather be spammed with music composed by someone I know in a forum than with pornographic content by someone I don't even know.

5. Eventhough no one noticed it (but I should have made it clear), my question was directly tied to the use of computers to record music: I am planning on upgrading my Digital Audio Workstation, also knows as DAW, and am therefore seeking technical help relating to specific computer hardware (perhaps later posts). Asus mainboards are very popular among digital music enthusiasts due to their stability and performance in applications involving audio technology

6. No more link inserting (not even in my signature line)

7. If you don't agree with the above definition of the word "spam", then this Web site itself (and all Web sites for that matter ) is "spam", because I found its link in google.com which advertised it to me and to millions of Internet users for the sole purpose to make money, whether directly or indirectly (true definition of "advertisement"). Of course, the big spammer here wouldn't be this Web site itself or its creators, but google.com (if #7 is valid, I have just "spammed" everyone reading this by simply typing "google.com")

8. I did come back to post this message (and many more if I am still allowed of course). This alone proves my "clean" intentions (I wouldn't have cared to type this relatively long message in a language that's not even mine if my goal here were to "spam")

9. I apologize for having inserted my music link but I do hope the music relaxed you a little after a stressful day (assuming you listened to some of it)

10. I probably forgot to mention one or more valid points

11. Thank you all for welcoming me in your world :)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris, I looked at the Asus board again and noticed that the 2 blue connectors are different in size (pin number). One (vertical, on left side) is longer than the other (horizontal, right side). There is also another blue connector (shade of blue) on the far left side of the board, at the bottom. I don't know what that connector is for.

Thanks again,
Ben

Composer, your points are well taken. I misinterpreted your post and I apologize for the gruf response.

As for your question, you can download the manual for this board HERE (http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock478/P4P800-E%20DX/e1526_p4p800-e_deluxe.pdf) . If you look on page 25 (or 2.2.3) they have a nice layout drawing which identifies most of the features.

It's interesting that Asus is popular in music circles. They are generally of very good quality and as you can see from the manual, that particular board is about a feature rich as your going to find.

9. I apologize for having inserted my music link but I do hope the music relaxed you a little after a stressful day (assuming you listened to some of it)
I did listen to a bit of it; not much, I was at work at the time.

Kind of reminded me of Brian Eno's Music For Airports with more synth sounds. Interesting stuff - keep up the good work. :)

Chris, thanks for the listen and the encouragements. I appreciate that.
Steve, thank you for the link to the board's PDF. I haven't read all of it yet, but I did look at the diagram on p.25. So if I understand, the board does have IDE connectors (I see 2 of them: Primary & Secondary) just like the one on my Dell Dimension 4100. I still don't know what RAID is, but would this board allow a user to do the following configuration (as an example):

1 HDD on SATA 1
1 HDD on SATA 2
1 CD-R/DVD burner on IDE 1
1 CD-ROM (or other oprical drive) on IDE 2

Audio workstations recommend the use of at least 2 HDDs: 1 for the OS and all software (audio applications) and 1 for audio files. The reason is obvious: less "stress" on a single HDD doing everything (audio streaming + OS processes). For even better performance, some use 3 HDDs: 1 for OS, 1 for applications, and 1 for audio files.

Using only 1 HDD with 2 partitions is not recommended.

Thanks again,
Ben

Your example will work with this board. Basically, you have two IDE ports. Each supports two devices. You could have the two optical drives on one IDE cable/port and two ata hard drives on the other. You would still have the two sata channels available for two more hard drives.

That's without getting into the RAID features at all. You can check out these links for more info on RAID...

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci214332,00.html

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/

Thanks Steve.

What do you think is better in the case of IDE ports as far as performance's concerned:

1. 1 HDD + 1 optical drive on each IDE, or

2. 2 HDDs on one and 2 optical drives on the other (like you suggested).

Thank you also for the links. RAID is new to me.
Ben

Since IDE supports up to two devices per channel (connector on the mobo) there are of course limitations. Only one device can have access to the channel at one time. That means if you have a hard drive and an optical drive on one channel, and the hard drive is streaming an audio file, the optical drive must wait its turn before a CD can be burned. This is just an example, but it shows how you must closely examine your drives' usages before plugging them into your mobo! Don't put two drives on the same channel if you want to use them both at once. A modern chipset can juggle IDE/ATA devices quite well, but for efficiency's sake, don't put too much stress on it.

For a more historical look at IDE, ATA, ATAPI, DMA, etc - check this (http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20020806/ide-04.html) out. Not only does this article explain the various speed upgrades that ATA has seen, but it also talks about the protocol layer, which is where most of the confusion about IDE vs ATA stems from.

SATA, on the other hand, fixes all those ATA problems! Nice and simple, one drive per port, which also happens to be a channel. Simple. And because of the advanced way that SATA works, if you have 8 SATA ports and 8 SATA drives connected to them, then all 8 drives can be accessed at once! :cool: No waiting in line, no waiting their turn. Each and every SATA port has a direct and dedicated connection to the chipset. And FYI, I know that at least Plextor has a SATA optical drive out there...

Thank you saphalline:)

Edit:
Steve, can the 2 SATA ports with RAID 0 and 1 on that Asus mainboard be used for "regular" SATA drives? That would be great because one would be able to use up to 4 SATA HDDs and use the IDE ports just for optical drives.
Thank you.

You don't have enable RAID if you don't want to; there's no physical difference between a RAID drive and a non-RAID drive, it's just whether you put it on a RAID array or not. Yes, the configuration you mentioned in your most recent post would work fine. You could even have a very large IDE drive on the same channel as one of your optical drive dedicated to backing up data.

Two things two keep in mind when you start talking about having 4 SATA drives, 2-3 P-ATA drives, plus prolly a floppy and/or Jazz and/or Zip drive: heat and power.

You're going to need a good, beefy power supply to be able to keep up with everything, and just getting a generic 550 watt PSU won't cut it. We can get into a discussion about rails and voltages, but to cut it short, spend the money and get a good brand. Enermax is arguably the most rock-solid brand. Antec is very good, also. There are others that I can't think of right now, I'm sure some folks will chime in.

With that many drives spinning, you're going to generate plenty of heat. I'd suggest getting a full tower case that has good airflow and plenty of fans. Remember that 12 cm fans will move more air at lower rpm's (which means less noise) than the smaller 8 cm fans.

I have some more basic questions about SATA, and I was torn between diluting this thread and starting a new one about essentially the same thing.

It's my once-every-two-years time to upgrade my system, and I'm trying to stick to getting as few components as possible (it never works, though). Being lazy, instead of backing up my data and then reinstalling the OS, I usually start with a new HDD and use the old one(s) as either slaves or externals that I can copy data back from at my leisure once the OS is in place.
I'm wondering about going with a SATA drive (or drives) this time - I don't know much about them yet, but I have learned some from this thread already - I am wondering if a SATA drive and an IDE drive can coexist connected to the same motherboard. Right now I have a Western Digital 160GB EIDE as master with a 120GB EIDE as slave, on an Asus P4B800 motherboard. Assuming the board supports SATA (I will look that up later) would I be able to use a SATA drive...hmm - I might have just answered my own question in trying to put the scenario into words. I can't use SATA as master OR slave, and if there is another HDD then the EIDE would require a setting of either master or slave - or would Cable Select take care of that? At any rate I couldn't have the conventional master/slave relationship, so does that mean all HDDs on a system need to be either one type OR the other?
(and if my motherboard doesn't support SATA, then gee, I might just have to go out and buy a new one. Darn.)

Thanks -
Don

Yes, essayons, your motherboard supports SATA. While we're on the subject, not only does the mobo have to support SATA, the power supply does as well - the power connection isn't the old 4 pin molex.

Worrying about whether you can have SATA drives and IDE drives is like wanting firewire but you don't know if you can because all your peripherals are USB. Of course you can! The interfaces are unrelated except for the type of component going on the other end - they just happen to both be hard drives. Master and slave relationship will stay the same on your IDE drives, and is irrelevant to SATA drives.

Run cables from all available interfaces to hard drives if you want. And if you don't feel like you've got enough drives, get a few pci controller cards. SATA or IDE, it doesn't matter which. As long as you've got power to make them run and available connectors to hook up the data, you can have as many of both kinds as you want. Heck, get exotic and throw some SCSI drives in there while you're at it. ;)

Thanks, pentachris!

I don't know if I need ALL those drives - my case is cut-rate and everything runs on the hot side anyway, so I leave the side panel off (unless company's coming). I HAD been waiting for those new BTX boards & cases to come out with their improved airflow, but I haven't seen or heard anything about them since last winter.

Sounds like at the very least I'd save a bit of room by eliminating those annoying ribbon cables, though.

Don

Bummer. I got the motherboard wrong (guess I need a memory upgrade) - it's a P4B266, which doesn't support SATA. Time for a new motherboard!! :D
Thanks for all the other good info, gang - I'll be putting it to good use soon!

Thanks Chris.
So if one wanted to use 4 SATA HDDs on that Asus board, they would be plugged to all 4 SATA ports without messing with that long connector called "PRI_RAID"?

Thanks again,
Ben.

Get an Asus board, essayons!

P.S: your user name is the french verb "essayer" conjugated in the first person of the plural (i.e, "we"). It means "Let's try". It goes well with your upcoming hardware upgrade trial/test. Interesting:-)

So if one wanted to use 4 SATA HDDs on that Asus board, they would be plugged to all 4 SATA ports without messing with that long connector called "PRI_RAID"?That is correct. SATA ports are very small, they look nothing like IDE ports. They're also on a completely different bus - IDE and SATA never interfere with eachother. Mix and match them however you want.

The IDE connector labeled as "PRI_RAID" is the primary IDE channel, and also happens to be hooked up to a RAID capable controller (built into the south bridge). However, even when RAID capability is there, you don't have to use it. Nor are RAID connectors any different from normal ones. RAID determines how the system uses hard drives, not what type of hard drives you use (again, there's no difference between a normal hard drive and a hard drive in a RAID array). If you don't want or need RAID, just ignore it. A lot of us here have RAID on our mobo's, but we often don't use it. I've never used RAID on my own machine, but I have put together RAID arrays for others. It can be nice to have if you can afford to buy two or more identical hard drives. ;)

The IDE connector labeled as "PRI_RAID" is the primary IDE channel

I thought the primary IDE channel was one of the two ports near the memory slots. There are 2 primary IDE channels? I'm lost.

Thanks for your reply, Saphalline.
Ben.

There are 2 primary IDE channels?Yep. One is primary to the south bridge, the other is primary to the RAID controller. It's true that normally you only have 2 IDE connectors per mobo, but with all the drives that people are using these days, RAID has gained leaps and bounds in popularity and usage. Most of the good mobo's these days offer tons of drive options. One of the advancements in IDE connectors that can be offered is to simply add more IDE controllers. That way, you get more IDE connectors, and more than one primary IDE controller.

If we are still talking about the Asus P4P800-E Deluxe mobo, then there are two IDE connectors provided by the ICH5R south bridge that also have RAID capability, and one IDE connector provided by the Promise 20378 RAID controller chip that has RAID capability. That gives you a total of three IDE connectors, and 6 IDE devices. Again, you don't have to use the RAID, but it's there if you want to.

For SATA, that mobo has 4 SATA ports total. Two are provided by the ICH5R south bridge and are RAID capable. Two are provided by the Promise 20378 RAID controller chip and are RAID capable. SATA has no primary/secondary or master/slave limitations, so a SATA port is a SATA port. :cool:

Weeeeelll, I do have an Asus board, but I need/want a newer model. This one got older a lot faster than I had thought it would (so did I, for that matter).
And yes, while my nom de plume does translate to that in French, I prefer to think of it as Latin, the motto of my alma mater.

Gonna get me a new mobo now!

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, Saphalline:)
Go luck hunting for an Asus, Essayons.

Okay... I think I'm missing something or maybe just dense. I am using this mobo (P4P800-E Deluxe) and have 2 optical drives on the secondary IDE, 2 hard drives on the primary IDE.

But now I have need to add the 3rd hard drive. At this time, I'm not interested in an array or anything... I just need the 3rd hard drive. On page 2-28 of the User's Guide, I find the following note:

"By default, the drive that you connect to the PRI_RAID connector follow s the DMA133/100/66/33 protocol as an independent drive, not as a disk array."

Now I took that to mean that I could connect a single IDE drive to the PRI_RAID connector and have it recognized for what it is and me be a happy camper. Is that not correct and I will not be able to do that???

Thanks!

According to what I've been told here and to that phrase you quoted, yes you can add a 3rd IDE HD to your system by connecting it to that port.

Cool... I hope so. That would make life much easier. Of course it is easy enough to add a PCI IDE controller but I would lots rather use that RAID port if possible.

Thanks!

I think you will be fine attaching an IDE drive to the PRI_RAID connector. It's like an add on pci IDE controller just built into the motherboard.

If you haven't bought the drive yet, keep in mind all the SATA channels you have. Prices for SATA drives are comparable to the IDE variety and you get a slight performance boost.

Thanks Steve!.... I'm sure gonna give it a try. I haven't looked at the bios yet but I expect there is a switch in there maybe to make it all happen the way it should. Thanks too on the tip about the SATA ports... but I already have an 80gb IDE. I really don't need the performance so much from this 3rd drive as I'll just be cluddering it up with junque stuff anyway. :)

Thanks!
Wayne

Okay... for those who might be interested... it does work. :-) Here are the steps required (at least in my case):

1) Access BIOS -- Advanced > Onboard Devices Configuration. Make sure "Onboard Promise Controller" is Enabled. Select "IDE" as the Operating Mode (RAID is the default).

2) Install the SATA378 Driver from the mobo CD for your particular O/S (Windows 2000 or better is required).

3) Set the drive up (format, drive letter, etc.) using Computer Management.

And that's all there is to it.

Thanks to all for your encouragement!

Glad to hear you got it working! Good job! :cool:

And to further note, you can also add another IDE drive as a slave to that 80GB HDD you just added. Like I said, the RAID connector can function just like a normal IDE connector, so the master/slave relationship still stands. But for future HDD upgrades, look to your SATA ports. Like Steve said, SATA hard drives are better. Yay SATA!! :D