Why don't new motherboards have 2nd IDE controller?

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I've noticed that the newer motherboards seem to have cut in half the number of IDE/PATA drives that they support. However, they are still retaining the useless floppy drive controller that almost nobody has used in the past 3 years.

Why is this? I am considering upgrading my system, but I have 4 relatively new IDE drives. I didn't intend to buy 2 new SATA drives when upgrading - just the motherboard & CPU.

Other than being paid off by hard drive manufacturers or something, I really can't figure out why they seem to be favoring the floppy drive over the capability to hook up 2 more IDE drives.

With the way that flash drive prices have been falling, I can't imagine that anybody out there is still using a floppy any more rather than a USB flash drive to transfer files.

So why should we be forced to buy SATA drives that we don't need?

 

[AmberClad]

IDE is becoming somewhat obsolete. SATA versions are only a tiny bit more expensive, if at all, and there are various reasons why they are more desirable. As for floppy drives, they're used to do BIOS updates. Many manufacturers nowadays have Windows utilities that will perform the BIOS flash, but some people still insist on doing it the old fashioned way .

 

[RaptureMe]

I know right? Jesus man this whole sata thing is starting to really piss me off since all the stores by me have dropped IDE HDD's to about a quarter of the prices they were 6 months ago.
I can get a 1TB IDE drive for like 89.00-105.00.
I was going to buy several hundred bucks worth of these bad boys then to find out that my mobo only has one IDE port??
F-ing carpet lickers!!
Well I think I can always buy some of those Internal IDE2SATA adapters but hten they are socking me for another couple hundred.
Typical just typical...

 

[Tempered81]

to sell SATA devices. Same reason sp2 didnt get dx10 - to sell vista. same reason new mobos aren't getting ddr2, and ddr3 is $2k.

Man i sound pessimistic!

That and similarly to the other aforementioned scenarios: performance increases.

Still I agree - new sockets should work with ddr2, xp should have dx10, vista should be faster, and new mobos should have 2 onboard Ide connectors.

 

[evident]

it's so lame. I can only use ONE ide HD and ONE dvd burner. there is no way in hell i'm going out to buy a SATA DVD burner! I have 3 IDE hard drives that are almost useless. i use them as external drives in my one ide external enclosure now... but it's irritating!!!!

 

[panfist]

Please don't stop reading this post based on my disagreement with everyone so far, because if you must use IDE you still have plenty of viable options. The real reason motherboards don't have IDE anymore is because it sucks and its outdated. Most people don't care about IDE anymore and would rather save another $5 than have an extra vestigial connector. I haven't used an IDE connector for anything other than swapping out optical drives in case of emergency since about 2005, and I didn't really think of myself as an early adopter. Actually that last statement is kind of lie, because I do have 4 IDE drives running in my home server/media center/router.

I've had about a dozen IDE ribbon cables fail on me for no reason over the past decade or so. Not one SATA cable. You never have to worry about putting two drives that you want on the same channel right next to each other. You also never have to worry about trying to burn a CD or DVD from one drive to another on the same channel and it taking twice as long.

$11 PCI IDE controller adds two channels to any system:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...CodeValue=1932%3A12548

You aren't being forced to buy SATA drives, but they really are much nicer. Can you find a better deal than $90 for a 500gig SATA drive? That's 18 cents a gigabyte for a big drive on a better interface. What's the point of going through the trouble to put 4 small cheap IDE drives in a system? They are just going to use more power, and take up more physical space in your case.

 

[PCTC2]

^ :thumbsup:

I switched over to SATA DVD-R/W and DVD-ROM last upgrade for $50. Even for DVD drives you get some performance boost over IDE. IDE puts two drives on a single channel and only one can communicate per clock. SATA is 1 drive per channel and has a higher theoretical bandwidth to begin with. It's the same with switching from ISA to PCI and SD-RAM to DDR/DDR2/DDR3 and AGP to PCIe. It's just a transistion of technologies and there will always be those who refuse to migrate for $$$ and others who adopt technologies immediately. IDE is dying. Let's just let it die.

EDIT:
I've heard this for DDR to DDR2 in forums before and AGP to PCIe in the Video Card forum.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

there is no way in hell i'm going out to buy a SATA DVD burner!

Why not ? If you don't have the $'s I can see that, but otherwise there's no reason not to go with a SATA burner.

 

[imported_wired247]

There is not a single thing positive to say about IDE now that SATA is mainstream. OK, with the small exception of the fact that the connectors are more robust.

Terrible cables, shorter cables, master/slave system, slower interface, blocks airflow, harder to install...

If you really need a WHOLE BUNCH OF 1TB IDE DRIVES there is such a thing as an IDE RAID / IDE controller card.

zomg $12 PLUS YOU GET MORE SATA!!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16816132012


Edit: my bad for basically saying the same thing as stated above, but it bears repeating...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: RaptureMe
I know right? Jesus man this whole sata thing is starting to really piss me off since all the stores by me have dropped IDE HDD's to about a quarter of the prices they were 6 months ago.
I can get a 1TB IDE drive for like 89.00-105.00.

Wow! Links?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: panfist
I've had about a dozen IDE ribbon cables fail on me for no reason over the past decade or so. Not one SATA cable. You never have to worry about putting two drives that you want on the same channel right next to each other. You also never have to worry about trying to burn a CD or DVD from one drive to another on the same channel and it taking twice as long.

I've had the opposite problem. I've had SATA cables fail on me when the cheap soft plastic bends at the connector and it stops making a tight fit, but I've never had an IDE cable fail on me.

 

[eflat]

i want to know why they don't get rid of the other one. there are still a lot of situations with xp where a floppy is useful though.

 

[Synomenon]

... See below...

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: panfist
I've had about a dozen IDE ribbon cables fail on me for no reason over the past decade or so. Not one SATA cable. You never have to worry about putting two drives that you want on the same channel right next to each other. You also never have to worry about trying to burn a CD or DVD from one drive to another on the same channel and it taking twice as long.

I've had the opposite problem. I've had SATA cables fail on me when the cheap soft plastic bends at the connector and it stops making a tight fit, but I've never had an IDE cable fail on me.

Use newer SATA cables that have the latches on the end. You must be using really cheap SATA cables if the "cheap soft plastic bends" stop making a tight fit.

Also, for those that need more IDE controllers, PCI IDE controllers are pretty cheap nowadays. Otherwise, can't help ya. SATA is here to replace IDE / here to stay.

Originally posted by: eflatmajor
i want to know why they don't get rid of the other one. there are still a lot of situations with xp where a floppy is useful though.

What do you use the floppy drive for in XP? Everything I've needed a floppy for, I've found replacements via bootable CDs / DVDs, USB flash drives, etc..

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: panfist
Please don't stop reading this post based on my disagreement with everyone so far, because if you must use IDE you still have plenty of viable options. The real reason motherboards don't have IDE anymore is because it sucks and its outdated. Most people don't care about IDE anymore and would rather save another $5 than have an extra vestigial connector. I haven't used an IDE connector for anything other than swapping out optical drives in case of emergency since about 2005, and I didn't really think of myself as an early adopter. Actually that last statement is kind of lie, because I do have 4 IDE drives running in my home server/media center/router.

I've had about a dozen IDE ribbon cables fail on me for no reason over the past decade or so. Not one SATA cable. You never have to worry about putting two drives that you want on the same channel right next to each other. You also never have to worry about trying to burn a CD or DVD from one drive to another on the same channel and it taking twice as long.

$11 PCI IDE controller adds two channels to any system:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...CodeValue=1932%3A12548

You aren't being forced to buy SATA drives, but they really are much nicer. Can you find a better deal than $90 for a 500gig SATA drive? That's 18 cents a gigabyte for a big drive on a better interface. What's the point of going through the trouble to put 4 small cheap IDE drives in a system? They are just going to use more power, and take up more physical space in your case.

Yep, just buy a PCI IDE controller card.

/thread

 

[djplayer]

what's IDE. =)

my motherboard has 9 Sata connections.

 

[mindless1]

Why not two? Because it's old. Old is evil, look at all the terrible things in this world rotting away and people dying of old age and molding old bread and old bills with late fees and old TV shows with bad color and acting and old girlfriends that stalk you and old shoes that smell funny and old cars that clunk when you drive 'em and old dogs that won't fetch your newspaper anymore. PATA just has to go.

Because humans desperately want to feel evolved by clinging to the latest technology. Blame it on the computer not the user, if only that hard drive were 3% faster then they'd suddenly be able to do things they've never done before. Like, umm, run another set of benchmarks and do email!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
Use newer SATA cables that have the latches on the end. You must be using really cheap SATA cables if the "cheap soft plastic bends" stop making a tight fit.

It's the "standard red sata cables" - the ones that come with controllers, mobos, etc. I've since switched to better ones. The snap latch wouldn't help in this case.

 

[evident]

i guess what really angers me, is why did it take manufacturers 15 years to stop putting serial and parallel ports on motherboards, but within 2 years stop putting IDE on boards?

to make it worse, on new motherboards which use the JMICRON ide controller takes longer to boot because, as a newegg reviewer put it, "the jmicron controller stops the boot process for 5 seconds so it can tell you in all it's glory that it detected two ide drives!"

if you want to get to the bottom of my resentment, look at my FS/FT thread in my sig and see all the IDE drives i have for sale (i have even more coming soon =\ )

 

[IcePickFreak]

I came into the same issue a year ago when I moved to a C2D setup with P965. I had several IDE hdd's and a IDE dvd burner that worked perfectly fine, so I picked up one of these so I didn't have to toss away perfectly good hardware. It's worked great and have had no issues with XP, however my recent foray into dual-booting Vista was a bit different. I keep my DVD drive on the onboard IDE controller to avoid any problems for installing OS's ect, and I have IDE hdd's hooked up to one channel on the PCI-IDE card. Promise has vista drivers, and I even flashed the BIOs for the PCI card to the latest but it doesn't help. Vista will stop detecting the drives connected to the PCI card after awhile (talking hours here), and once it does those drives aren't detected under XP anymore either. In fact, on boot-up theres a quick detection screen for the PCI card and even that won't detect the drives once Vista loses em, it says no connected drives detected and the only way I've found to correct it so they'll be detected by the BIOs and XP again is to reflash the BIOs of the PCI card. Whether it's the drivers or Vista that's in the wrong here I'm not sure, but either way my Vista dual-boot is going to disappear this weekend as I've found no use for it other than the slightly better looking desktop.
Heck, I haven't even made it to checking out a dx10 game and at this point I really don't care to. At any rate, I'd read up on the particular PCI-IDE card you're looking at if your running Vista and make sure it's not going to have problems. If you're on XP have at it.

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: evident
i guess what really angers me, is why did it take manufacturers 15 years to stop putting serial and parallel ports on motherboards, but within 2 years stop putting IDE on boards?

to make it worse, on new motherboards which use the JMICRON ide controller takes longer to boot because, as a newegg reviewer put it, "the jmicron controller stops the boot process for 5 seconds so it can tell you in all it's glory that it detected two ide drives!"

if you want to get to the bottom of my resentment, look at my FS/FT thread in my sig and see all the IDE drives i have for sale (i have even more coming soon =\ )

Wait, so IDE was only two years old when they started to stop putting them on boards?

 

[evident]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi

Originally posted by: evident
i guess what really angers me, is why did it take manufacturers 15 years to stop putting serial and parallel ports on motherboards, but within 2 years stop putting IDE on boards?

to make it worse, on new motherboards which use the JMICRON ide controller takes longer to boot because, as a newegg reviewer put it, "the jmicron controller stops the boot process for 5 seconds so it can tell you in all it's glory that it detected two ide drives!"

if you want to get to the bottom of my resentment, look at my FS/FT thread in my sig and see all the IDE drives i have for sale (i have even more coming soon =\ )

Wait, so IDE was only two years old when they started to stop putting them on boards?

no!!! this is what i meant: after USB came out, serial and parallel ports were still implemented on all boards, until about 10 years after the fact (15 was a little exaggerating). SATA comes out and 2 years later ide is becoming less and less common on motherboards

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi

Wait, so IDE was only two years old when they started to stop putting them on boards?

No
IDE is much much older than that.



To those wanting to use more ide drives , just get one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822998001

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: evident

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi

Originally posted by: evident
i guess what really angers me, is why did it take manufacturers 15 years to stop putting serial and parallel ports on motherboards, but within 2 years stop putting IDE on boards?

to make it worse, on new motherboards which use the JMICRON ide controller takes longer to boot because, as a newegg reviewer put it, "the jmicron controller stops the boot process for 5 seconds so it can tell you in all it's glory that it detected two ide drives!"

if you want to get to the bottom of my resentment, look at my FS/FT thread in my sig and see all the IDE drives i have for sale (i have even more coming soon =\ )

Wait, so IDE was only two years old when they started to stop putting them on boards?

no!!! this is what i meant: after USB came out, serial and parallel ports were still implemented on all boards, until about 10 years after the fact (15 was a little exaggerating). SATA comes out and 2 years later ide is becoming less and less common on motherboards

That doesn't bother me.
What I hate is motherboards that still have floppy connectors .
I haven't installed a floppy drive in a pc in over 8 years.

I can't even buy blank floppies locally I have to mail order them.

 

[Synomenon]

Yeah, they really do need to get rid of floppy already. For anyone that needs these legacy things (parallel, serial, PS/2, IDE, floppy) there are alternate ways to do what you needed to do w/ these legacy ports and there are also adapters for them to use with the newer interfaces.