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Want to use SATA HDD in old IDE computer

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wchang99

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I have an SATA HDD I want to use in an old IDE Pentium4 2.40GHz computer, WinXP (Dell Dimension 4600, 1GB RAM, 120GB current boot drive HDD, nV GeForce FX5200).

The SATA HDD is 250GB 7200RPM (Samsung SP2504C), came OEM in a computer from 2007 (so SATA rev. 1.0 I think?).

If possible, I'd like to use the SATA HDD as the new permanent boot drive.

I understand the choices are a PCI SATA controller card (with molex to SATA power adapter) or an IDE to SATA adapter? I heard bad things about the latter and the former seems more old school and reliable, so I'm looking at this PCI SATA controller card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132001

and this power adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812530007 .

Is this what I should do? Many thanks...
 
Reading the commends on the controller, it it seems like it has a boot ROM, so that should work fine. The power adapter is correct as well. Blain's solution is obviously cheaper and doesn't involve any additional drivers, so it might be worth buying that first and seeing if it works (if you're not in a hurry).
 
Thanks for the help, guys.

Are these two types equally reliable?

And in terms of speed, an SATA drive attached one of these 2 ways isn't going to be slower than an IDE drive, right (no reason to get an IDE drive)?

And, for the PCI controller solution, the PCI bus speed wouldn't somehow limit the speed or possibly corrupt the drive?

Sorry about the questions.. although it is on a budget (I don't want to get an IDE drive), reliability is important because it's for my father's computer (can't keep an eye on it to see if it's working correctly) and there will be lots of family photo jpgs stored on it (don't want to risk corruption -- at least not any more than would happen with a normal IDE drive setup).

Thanks again...
 
wchang99 said:
Thanks for the help, guys.

Are these two types equally reliable?

And in terms of speed, an SATA drive attached one of these 2 ways isn't going to be slower than an IDE drive, right (no reason to get an IDE drive)?
Click to expand...
considering IDE drives are really old and not really capable of saturating the bus they were on, no, shouldn't be slower.

And, for the PCI controller solution, the PCI bus speed wouldn't somehow limit the speed or possibly corrupt the drive?
Click to expand...

PCI won't corrupt and if the PCI bus is the limiting factor (possible as iirc the fastest drives now actually can sustain 133 MB/s on their outer tracks), then using the drive adapter will be as well. the IDE ports run off of the PCI bus.


i'd get the card, myself. and that one is as cheap as the ebay guys without the shady buying experience.
 
It would be cheaper just to go on ebay and buy a lot of old 80gb ide drives. I bought a lot of 5 for like 30 bucks. Great things to have around.
 
wchang99 said:
reliability is important because it's for my father's computer (can't keep an eye on it to see if it's working correctly) and there will be lots of family photo jpgs stored on it (don't want to risk corruption -- at least not any more than would happen with a normal IDE drive setup).
Click to expand...

If reliability is important, you need to have a proper recovery strategy in place. Just hoping that a drive (any drive) won't fail doesn't count. Your father probably doesn't have a huge amount of content on his PC, given the limited size of his current drive, so sign him up for a cloud backup service like Carbonite.
 
The Dell Dimension 4600 has 2 SATA ports on the motherboard. If you connect a SATA drive to one of these ports you will need to go into the BIOS (F2) on first boot and change the drive configuration for that port from OFF to AUTO.
 
Lanyap said:
The Dell Dimension 4600 has 2 SATA ports on the motherboard. If you connect a SATA drive to one of these ports you will need to go into the BIOS (F2) on first boot and change the drive configuration for that port from OFF to AUTO.
Click to expand...

God almighty, you can see my ignorance of that system. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I realized I really needed to spend a little time researching things like PCI bus speed to inform myself a little better, but hadn't had a chance to yet. But, if the system has SATA ports, obviously that makes things much simpler.
 
To use ANY drive over 128 GB you need a feature called "48-bit LBA Support" in THREE places: the device (the 250 GB SATA drive), the HDD controller, and the OS. Obviously the 250 GB drive has this; ALL SATA controllers have this; but check your Win XP! the first (original) version of Win XP does NOT have this feature. It was added in Service Pack 1, and maintained in all subsequent. So, if you have NO SP's installed in your Win XP, you MUST update it BEFORE installing the new large HDD. I suggest update to SP3 if you're not there already.

By the way, do NOT worry about any suggestion to "update your BIOS" so you can use the large HDD. That advice is relevant to older machines and IDE drives. But you are proposing to use a SATA drive, and ALL SATA drives and controllers have 48-bit LBA Support.

OOPS! For a correction, see my post below from 05-13-2015.
 
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0roo0roo said:
Oh well bit late and see you already have sata ports😉

But on ebay there are a ton of cheap sata adapters for pci e and pci...anyone have experience with those?
Click to expand...

They work fine as long as the drivers are there. Some uber cheap controllers have terrible drivers though, and it's really hard to tell what exact controller a particular card uses.
 
ah ok, looking at the listings its either via or silicon image, i had an ide silicon image card a while back that worked fine. ordered one, will know soon enough
 
Blain said:
Click Here for the solution.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of the simple HDE adapter. However, I've heard some conflicting views on its usage - and similar items. If the SATA drive is the only drive in the IDE motherboard system and therefore the primary drive, does the adapter & SATA combination permit booting as normal?
 
GeordieLad said:
I like the idea of the simple HDE adapter. However, I've heard some conflicting views on its usage - and similar items. If the SATA drive is the only drive in the IDE motherboard system and therefore the primary drive, does the adapter & SATA combination permit booting as normal?
Click to expand...

Yes. With the SATA to PATA Adapter it is now a PATA Drive and will act accordingly.
 
I made an error in my post on 04-13-2012. What I said about all SATA systems supporting 48-bit LBA is correct. BUT Blain's first reply was a good one, suggesting an adapter that allows you to connect a SATA HDD to an IDE port. On many older mobos with IDE ports, the BIOS of the mobo did NOT support 48-bit LBA on those ports. Many of then talked (in manuals) about "Support for Large Hard Drives" or "Support for LBA", but often that was for only the first version of LBA, using 28-bit addressing. The concept Of "Large Hard Drive" at that time did not exceed 137 GB (by the disk manufacturer's way of counting). So if you are trying to attach any HDD (SATA or not) over 137 GB to an IDE port, be sure to check specifically for a statement that the mobo BIOS version you have installed supports "48-bit LBA", and not just "LBA" on the IDE ports (not just on the SATA ports, if there are any). If you don't have it, check whether there is a BIOS update available from the mobo manufacturer, and how to install that.
 
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