Wish to upgrade x2 HDD's to SATA?

[jet.]

I have two Western Digital IDE drives situated on a Abit NF7 rev2.0 mobo, 80GB (Win XP Pro SP1)/120GB (Backup files) and a DVD-RW and CD-RW on the other IDE and was wondering a few things:

1.) Would i see any benefit from using a Serial Converter on both drives, effectively taking them off IDE and becoming SATA based?

2.) As the HDD's will now be on SATA, will my CD drives run faster on the master IDE, increased bandwidth perhaps? Or would i benefit making both masters on separate IDE's?

3.) What are the differences in SATA based drives and IDE converted to SATA based drives?

Think that's about it for now, cheers!

[Steve R Jones]

1) No

2) No

3) The ONLY advantage of going to SATA at this time is the thin cable which "might" help the air flow in the case.

[jet.]

Well actually i was thinking of purchasing a Gainward 6800 GT and it will get in the way of the first IDE on my mobo, therefore this seemed like the only option.

I was checking if in doing so i would get any benefit in the hard drive department.

Thanks.

[dajogejr]

If you're talking Western Digital Raptors for SATA, then...you will get a slight speed increase due to their 10K RPM, not the SATA interface.

Not to mention, they carry an enterprise class 5 year warranty.

Mind you...I said slight increase.

Their biggest drawback is a small GB per dollar investment.

36GB and 74GB are all they are offered in....

a little over $100 for the little guy, and a little under $200 for big brother....

[Midknyte]

1) you would see worse performance by using the serial to parallel adapters. even if they were native sata, I doubt you would see a difference. There are a lot of other things that affect performance, such as cache, spindle speed, etc.

2) you would see no performance gain by removing drives, but putting each drive on their own channel would help.

3) you just said the difference. there are native SATA and bridged (converted) SATA. it takes processing power to convert the signal, so you will lose performance.

[jet.]

Nice one, thanks. So the convertor just allows for a nicer cable, bar a slight hinderence if any with the processing of the signal. Gotcha.

[Midknyte]

a good analogy would be a translator at the UN.

if both people speak English, then communication is pretty smooth. if one speaks English and the other person speaks French, then they need an interpreter. This would slow down the flow of communication.