Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Connecting an SATA to an IDE-only motherboard

mkeller · 01-27-2008, 04:10 PM

Hello,

I recently had one of my two hard-drives die (well, actually, it gave me a notice that it was going to die), so I bought a new one. I had heard that SATA 2 drives were better than IDEs, so I bought one - and discovered that they have different connector pins than IDEs do, and that my motherboard doesn't have a plug for them.

From reading around online, I found that it is possible to use SATAs on an old computer, by using a SATA host controller. I found some on eBay, too, for cheap. But it says on the eBay page that the controller for sale is "Compliant With Serial ATA 1.0 Specification". I've got a SATA 2. Will it still work? The link to the controller in question is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/US-SATA-To-IDE-U...QQcmdZViewItem

Also, I read somewhere that SATA drives are always treated as 'master' by a computer. I have an IDE drive that I want to install Windows on, and then use the SATA 2 for Linux. However, I've heard that Windows won't work unless the drive it's installed on is the 'master.' What can I do? (the IDE drive won't work with Linux, due to driver bugs)

01-27-2008, 04:10 PM	#1 (permalink)
mkeller Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 19 OS: Windows XP, Vista, Linux Mint	Connecting an SATA to an IDE-only motherboard Hello, I recently had one of my two hard-drives die (well, actually, it gave me a notice that it was going to die), so I bought a new one. I had heard that SATA 2 drives were better than IDEs, so I bought one - and discovered that they have different connector pins than IDEs do, and that my motherboard doesn't have a plug for them. From reading around online, I found that it is possible to use SATAs on an old computer, by using a SATA host controller. I found some on eBay, too, for cheap. But it says on the eBay page that the controller for sale is "Compliant With Serial ATA 1.0 Specification". I've got a SATA 2. Will it still work? The link to the controller in question is: http://cgi.ebay.com/US-SATA-To-IDE-U...QQcmdZViewItem Also, I read somewhere that SATA drives are always treated as 'master' by a computer. I have an IDE drive that I want to install Windows on, and then use the SATA 2 for Linux. However, I've heard that Windows won't work unless the drive it's installed on is the 'master.' What can I do? (the IDE drive won't work with Linux, due to driver bugs)