Hard drives.....does it matter how many pins??

[blackbelt]

Looking at Seagate 320GB 7200 22 pin? Have a eVGA 6801 mobo......how do i know how many pins and if this matches??

 

[Aikouka]

You shouldn't have to worry about the amount of pins your HDD's IDE connector has. Also, nVidia boards are still relatively legacy safe and include PATA connectors, so you should be fine as long as you have a spot open on your ribbon cable or you have a connector open.

The reason they specify is most likely so users don't get them confused with the FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) connector that most motherboards have.

 

[caberguy]

You're probably going to want a SATA HD, as long as it says SATA or Serial ATA (SATA II, SATA 1.5, SATA 3GB, etc.) it'll be fine. The SATA II 3GB/s drives are theoretically faster. You could use an IDE (EIDE, Ultra ATA) HD but it I think you've only got one IDE slot (which will control 2 drives) and you probably want to save that for optical drives. That aside SATA is faster.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: caberguy
The SATA II 3GB/s drives are theoretically faster. That aside SATA is faster.

incorrect information here - the sata II 3Gb/s drive is the same as a regular sata drive, the conection is faster and may offer other options like ncq, but it is still connected to a regular drive. huge difference between GB/s and Gb/s...

and if you get 2hdds, both being equal, the sata drive will not be faster. they will be the same. sata is just an interface, and it still connects to the same hdd hardware that a ide controller connects to, so a 7200rpm drive is going to be the same as the interface is not the bottleneck, it is the actual mechanics of the drive that are the bottlenecks.

the theoretical capacities for the differnent connectors are as follows - ata100(100MB/s) - ide, ata133(133Mb/s) - ide, sata (150MB/s), sata II/3Gb/s(300MB/s) which is all fine and dandy, but a brand new 7200rpm hdd will only move data at a max str of ~65MB/s, mabye 70MB/s, so you can see that the interface is not the issue. in fact it wasn't until recently that any hdd drive had a str over 100MB/s, which is the newest generation 15K scsi from seagate - the 15k.5.

 

[caberguy]

Umm... yeah, that's why I said theoretically faster. Since a SATA II drive can theoretically move more information per second it is THEORETICALLY faster, if not actually faster at the moment, and I was going to explain that but the question was "should I buy a 22 pin HD" and I figured it really wasn't relevant to the question. Also, yes, SATA is faster than ide, as you very clearly point out SATA refers to the interface and the SATA interface is faster than the ide interface. Oh and yes GB=gigabytes and Gb=gigabits I know I goofed...
Do you feel better now?

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: blackbelt
Looking at Seagate 320GB 7200 22 pin? Have a eVGA 6801 mobo......how do i know how many pins and if this matches??

Blackbelt, just so I can take a look, could you please link where you're looking at this drive (if it's online)?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: caberguy
Umm... yeah, that's why I said theoretically faster. Since a SATA II drive can theoretically move more information per second it is THEORETICALLY faster, if not actually faster at the moment, and I was going to explain that but the question was "should I buy a 22 pin HD" and I figured it really wasn't relevant to the question. Also, yes, SATA is faster than ide, as you very clearly point out SATA refers to the interface and the SATA interface is faster than the ide interface. Oh and yes GB=gigabytes and Gb=gigabits I know I goofed...
Do you feel better now?

what i am saying is that the op seems a bit green. no reason to give incorrect or misleading information, we can get enough of that from the manf marketing information. your statement that sata is faster sound to me like you are saying that sata hdds are faster then their ata counterparts which they are not. it is just the interface has the potential to be faster.
and yes i do feel better knowing the correct information goes out to people that aren't sure or don't know.