Wondering about SATA...

[jere01]

I'm new to this whole Serial ATA thing and I was wondering about a couple of things.

Can you use regular 7200 rpm ATA drives on the SATA system? (is there any point?)
Can you run a 20 gig SATA HD (for your OS and applications) along with 2 ATA HDs simultaneously?
Should I be looking at motherboards that have this SATA ability for a home computer or is it not worth it?

Thanks guys!

 

[BG4533]

SATA alone will provide no performance increase. You can use regular ATA drives on the SATA controller, but you need adaptors that are like $25 each and performance may be even worse than on a regular IDE controller. IDE and SATA can coincide without a problem. My opinion is if you are looking at a MOBO that comes with SATA and a HD that comes with it and isnt much more expensive, than go for it. For most purposes there isnt much of a reason for it quite yet.