hard drive - Is there any way to use a 500G 2.5" SATA HDD with a computer with an old i845 chipset?
2014-07
Vinayak
I have an old computer lying around that uses the Intel i845 chipset. It is conencted to a 40GB, 5800RPM 3.5" Seagate ST340015A Ultra ATA HDD that recently went kaput.
It uses an 80-conductor 40-pin Ultra ATA/100 cable to connect to the motherboard. I have a spare 500GB, 5400 RPM 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar HK500.B SATA HDD that I would like to connect to this ancient computer if it's possible.
The HK500.B HDD is an internal HDD meant for notebooks and has an SATA interface that looks like this:
I checked out a few IDE to SATA adapters online that I think might help, but they all look a little different from each other so I'm not sure which one to get.
I saw this adapter at: http://www.cooldrives.com/satoidecofor.html
and this one at: http://shopping.rediff.com/product/ide-to-sata-sata-to-ide-hdd-converter-cable/10366312?sc_cid=search
If you have used any such other adapters, or know the right one for the job, please let me know. Thanks.
Journeyman Geek
PATA had two varient interfaces - the one on top is for desktops - using a 40 pin connector and molex for power and a 44 pin connector for laptops which included power. The latter is for laptop drives with a single connector doing both power and data.
SATA has a single interface, and the connectors are the same. You can use any drive thats small enough to fit in your bay - I use a mix of 7mm and 9mm thick 2.5 inch drives and regular 3.5 inch hard drives. The separation between the power and sata connectors are standard and you should be able to fit either adaptor with no issues. The first adaptor will connect directly to the drive and is the correct one - it will connect to the same molex power adaptor and 40 pin connector on the PC side, and the sata connectors will 'just fit' - though I'm not entirely sure if such an adaptor can be used for a boot drive, or how reliable they are - some people report problems with them. It might be worth looking at reviews to check before you buy one for a boot drive
The second adapter is for connecting a pata laptop HDD to a desktop, and is entirely unsuitable for your use
Another option might be to find a pci-sata controller and use that instead. They arn't terribly expensive if you shop around, and might end up being much less finicky.
Dillie-O
I picked up a barebones PC kit the other day so that I could get a speed boost and still use my old hard drives/DVD drives, etc.
I currently have two IDE drives and unfortunately the new motherboard only has 1 IDE head to plug into (and I fear I have now showed my age on my last home built PC). Since I need to keep a functioning DVD-RW drive, this means that I will have to lose one of the hard drives.
However, there is a SATA port on the motherboard and I saw that they sell adapters that will allow the IDE drive to plug in and function off the IDE port.
It isn't critical that I have both drives up and running, but if I can get some extra boost out of running the old hard drive through the SATA port, I could see it being worthwhile. Will I get any kind of performance boost by installing the old hard drive this way?
A Dwarf
There's no real advantage. The bootleneck will be moved to the EIDE drive interface which, as you know limits your hard drive bandwidth to the ATA specification you see on the drive label.
However, being that the motherboard offers a SATA controller, you will gain a performance boost if you buy a SATA disk for it. At the current prices, you can get SATA disks cheaper than ATA ones.
quack quixote
Definitely no performance increase. The only advantage is being able to utilize your old drive internally.
It shouldn't have much negative performance impact either.
As an alternative, consider getting a cheap external USB enclosure for the old IDE drive, and a new SATA drive to install internally for performance. Naturally you'll see the biggest performance gains by moving your boot partition to the SATA drive.