SATA Drive Question

[dr_roberts49]

I currently have 2 hard drives and 2 CD drives. That takes care of my IDE connections. I went to Newegg to place my order for a new Aspire case and noticed they had a Maxtor SATA 80GB drive on sale. My ABIT IS7 supports SATA, and even provided the power adaptors and 2 SATA cables. I also have the drivers. I'm running XP Pro on a P4C 2.4Ghz.

Anyway, I'm thinking about ordering the drive and using it to store all my data on. It's just another disk drive, right? This might be a silly question, but I want to be sure. I appreciate any input.

Robert

[Vyx]

sata doesnt really benefit you if your running just one drive sata, if you were to order two it would because you basically take the two drives and splice them together. it also runs faster than standard ide configuration like loading windows and transfering files and stuff like that so if you were to get it you should get two drives run them sata, load windows on them and then store data on the other drives like music and that kind of good stuff

[Redwolf]

Yeah, it's just another Disk Drive. You may or may not need to install those SATA drivers (can't rmember if XP supports it or not), but it will work right even if you need to install those drivers.

Also, make sure adding the SATA drive won't disable the main IDE ports. I'm very sure it won't, but it's always best to be absolutely sure before making a big purchase. If the manual doesn't say anything about it, then it won't disable the port. Then go for it!

[John Prophet]

Just another hard drive...in the same way as scsi is just another hard drive...just a slightly different connector/implementation etc etc.

[dr_roberts49]

Thanks for all the feedback. I will eventually add a 2nd SATA and do what Override suggested. Right now, I'm spending a good chunk of change on modding my new case, plus I'm just recovering from holiday expenses I'm doing a lot of photo and video work right now, and the extra storage sounds nice. I'll look to see if adding the SATA drive will disable my IDE ports. Can't have that. Appreciate the heads up. I'll let everyone know how it turns out. If Newegg is true to form, I'll have all my goodies here by Friday, maybe Thursday. Placing the order tonight, right after dinner.

Robert