External enclosure: SATA, IDE or other?

[Pegun]

I'm looking to buy an external enclosure for extra hard drives that i have sitting around. I think I want one that has IDE but at what point does an IDE enclosure become useless and force you to switch to a SATA hard drive enclosure? I guess What I'm asking is will IDE become obsolete any time soon and relinquish its popularity to SATA?

 

[stogez]

The enclosure you get depends on what your HD is. If its IDE then you need IDE to USB/Firewire enclosure. Other way would be an eSATA enclosure but your motherboard needs to support eSATA for those.
As far as being obsolete goes, IDE is already being left behind by most new motherboard chipsets. Most new motherboards only support 2 IDE devices. But then again that has nothing to do with external enclosures. You would hook that up to either USB or Firewire or eSata.

 

[Pegun]

I understand that and do have an ide hard drive but i know they are starting to sell ide and sata combo enclosures which im contemplating. Thus the reasoning behind whether to get one or the other. I know my MB has two ide and two sata but will future motherboards not have ide and only sata?

 

[stogez]

I will try to explain this again. IDE will slowly die out. Its at one port now and will end up with none within a year or two. We will get more SATA ports. MBs now have anywhere from 4-8 SATA ports easily.
None of that has to do with which enclosure to get though. The encolsure is connected to the computer with USB/FIREWIRE/eSATA ports. It has nothing to do with how many IDE/SATA ports you have on your motherboard.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm having really good luck with external and internal SATA housings and trays. The nice thing about SATA housings is that, normally, there's no electronics between the hard drive and the PC. External USB and Firewire housings have (sometimes problematic) "IDE to USB" and "IDE to Firewire" converter circuitry.

IDE drives will be with us for a while and there's really no technical superiority of SATA drives over IDE for 99% of uses. But using a pure SATA connection over a USB or Firewire connection IS superior in speed and, I believe, reliability.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
But using a pure SATA connection over a USB or Firewire connection IS superior in speed and, I believe, reliability.

care to back that up?

 

[Roguestar]

USB = 480Mbit
SATA 2 = 3200Mbit

Though the pedant in me points out that you know that and want a source for the reliability claim...

 

[Paperdoc]

Now, now, let's not get trapped in the max speed deception. First of all, recognize that the real data transfer speed for an external drive will be the SLOWEST of the factors. In this case, there's the HDD interface (SATA I or SATA II), and then the interface from external case to computer controller. Of these, the case-to-controller interface is definitely slower than the HDD interface. (Besides, it is well known that neither IDE nor SATA HDD's ever come even close to their maximum data transfer speed.) I have seen some real-world measurements of these things. Irrespective of the HDD in the case, the USB2 and Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a) had similar performance, true eSATA was faster over a large copy operation, and the fastest (though uncommon) was Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b). The last was perhaps twice the speed of the first two for sustained data transfer jobs.

Reliability? Have not seen good info on that part.

 

[MichaelD]

/sets up lawnchair

I can see some interesting coversations on the way.

To OP: Stogez said it all in the first reply to this thread. The enclosure you'll buy depends on what type of HDs you currently have. If you have a big IDE drive sitting around, get an external enclosure that has an INTERNAL IDE connection. IMO though, if you have a 6-year old, 20GB HD, it's not worth using anymore. IDE is going away, but not completely anytime soon. 99% of the optical drives in use today are IDE. If you need IDE, then get IDE.

 

[stogez]

Thanks MichaelD, I was waiting for the debate to end or for OP to ask his question again. At this point, I hope he has his answer though...

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
But using a pure SATA connection over a USB or Firewire connection IS superior in speed and, I believe, reliability.

care to back that up?

Data transfer rate? About 70 MB/sec for SATA, versus around 25 MB/sec for USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. These are all MEASURED transfer rates.

Reliability? I have about ten offices using either USB or SATA hard drives that back up their entire SBS Servers every night. I've had several USB drive total failures and some others that give strange errors. I've had zero SATA drive problems so far.

 

[n7]

eSATA absolutely pwns USB/IEEE1394 in speed.

I don't need benchmarks to tell me it's at least twice as fast; when i use USB on my external, it takes forever.