IDE vs SATA?

[plautus]

Is there a significant performance difference? If I use a 500gb IDE drive in a SATA capable main board will the computer's speed and ability to play games be adversely affected? Is there any value to getting a IDE to SATA adapter and plugging the HD into the SATA port? Getting a new SATA drive isn't feasible. Thanks.

 

[fleshconsumed]

IDE transfer limit is 100MB/s (133MB/s in some cases), SATA is either 150MB/s or 300MB/s. Most of the IDE hard drives never hit 100MB/s linear transfer limit, so IDE interface does not affect linear transfer speeds. It might affect cached transfers, but that would be a fairly rare situation.

No it won't make sense to get IDE -> SATA adapter as your transfer rates will still be limited by IDE interface on your hard drive.

Sata does have its advantages such as higher transfer limit for newer hard drives such as Samsung F1 and better cable management, but I wouldn't kill myself over having IDE drive in my system.

 

[Heidfirst]

SATA HDDs have the same mechanical limits to transfer rates as IDE (except for Raptors which use a higher spindle speed) & typically only have a continuous transfer rate of 60Mb/s.
Apart from burst transfer rates you couldn't tell the difference between PATA & SATA versions of the same HDD.

 

[plautus]

For gaming is there a big difference? I'm not an avid gamer, but I do play occasionally.

 

[Rhoxed]

faster HD will only affect load times if anything.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't worry about it. There's no significant speed difference between PATA and SATA drives.

 

[cuti7399]

does seem to make different when you transfer big file

 

[GundamF91]

Until harddrive mechanism limitations catch up to the actual interface transfer speed, you are not going to see a real world difference in sustained transfer. You may see something in burst, but since modern drives have a lot of cache, it's not a big issue anyway.

The real reason you should get SATA is for cable management and keeps your tower cleaner and ventilated.

Also, you're better off using 2 dedicated SATA drives using SATA cables vs. running 1master/1slave on the same PATA cable.