which hard drive to buy ? UATA or SATA

Printable View

08-21-2005
gemini_shooter

which hard drive to buy ? UATA or SATA

Hi !

I have been planning to upgrade my hard drive for a vry long time and finally the time has come. Iam planning to but a 80GB hard drive or may be even a 160 GB one. There arefew questions I ran into which trying to find an answer for:

1. How do I know if my motherboard supports a SATA or UATA?
2. If it supports both which on would be better ?
3. How do I know what maximum size HDD my motherboard can support ?
4. Can I set this HDD as my boot hard drive?

I don't really know what motherboard I am running since I bought this computer pre-built, but if someone can tell me a way to find that, also my computer specs are P4 2.5GHz, 1GB DDR RAM, 30 GB HDD(Primary) 10GB HDD (secondary)

Any help would be appreciated.
08-21-2005
xxxrugby

4. Can I set this HDD as my boot hard drive?
Yes You Can

1. How do I know if my motherboard supports a SATA or UATA?
Look into device menager (Right Clink on My Computer -> Menage)
Look what mather board you have.
Look on its homepage. And serach for SCSI controllers then put in on floppy disk (if not found on Win CD).!

SATA works just fine. If you have appropriate SCSI controller.!
08-21-2005
gemini_shooter

Hi !
I don't really know what motherboard I have I bought this computer from dell, it is a dell 4550 I tried to look over the device manager but it didn't help me ,

Can anyone please help me , I did find one thing the current HDD that came with dell is an ATA HDD, other than that I am lost, I really want to buy a new hard drive but I don't understand if my motherboard would support a SATA or UATA, please help....
08-22-2005
ober

It depends on how old your computer is. UATA drives are older IDE devices, and most likely, your motherboard supports it. What we hope would be that your motherboard supports SATA drives. SATA is a much newer/faster interface and is much easier to work with (no jumpers, thinner cables, faster throughput).

SATA drives have thin, approximately .5" wide cables and are most often red. IDE (UATA) devices usually have 80 pin connectors (very wide cable with one wire being red, and the rest usually gray).

Look inside the case to determine what you have. You probably won't be able to find that information in the Device Manager.

Oh, and SATA != SCSI! SATA is Serial ATA.

I recommend going SATA, if your system supports it and has the correct connectors, but if it doesn't, you'll have to look around for Internal EIDE drives (you probably won't find them listed under UATA).
08-22-2005
xxxrugby

Oh, and SATA != SCSI! SATA is Serial ATA.

Oh yes I know.!
But yesterday I sow Segate Barracude .... SATA
And Win CD doesent recognize it. It need SCSI controler on.!!!
08-22-2005
ober

You're an idiot. You may need a Serial device DRIVER, or possibly RAID drivers... not a SCSI controller.
08-23-2005
gemini_shooter

My computer used the ribbon cables and I am not really sure if it can support the thinner cables SATA requires, it has normal power plugs and a normal data connector on my motherboard, I highly doubt it can support SATA,

What would be the other way to install SATA without me having to but a new motherboard, I guess I read somewhere I would need some kind of card ???
08-23-2005
ober

You can buy SATA PCI cards that will act as the controller for the drives, but make sure your power supply has the correct power connectors (not all SATA drives use Molex connectors).
08-23-2005
ober

You can buy SATA PCI cards that will act as the controller for the drives, but make sure your power supply has the correct power connectors (not all SATA drives use Molex connectors).
08-23-2005
xxxrugby

Code:

You're an idiot. You may need a Serial device DRIVER, or possibly RAID drivers... not a SCSI controller.

Well how to say this I install it.!!! I took CD of moetherboard and create on Floppy drivers for it.!

Well who cares. woot woot.!!!!!!!

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.!!!

Oh I forgot Every Idiot can do that.!
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.!!!
08-24-2005
bithub

Quote:

but make sure your power supply has the correct power connectors

When I bought my first 2 SATA drives, they came with converters. The latest drive I bought didn't come with a converter, so I had to buy one separate.