can i upgrade ide to sata?

[btm8595]

i have a laptop that uses ide for its internal hard drive. it loads pretty slowly. i want to upgrade to a different hard drive. i have heard of a sata hard drive.

1. is sata better than ide?

2. is it even possible to switch them?

3. how much would it cost to do so?

thank you.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

No, simply speaking, it's not.

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics or 'PATA') is a Parallel method of data transfer. It uses 40 to 50 pins depending on where it's being used and a 4-pin MOLEX connector. SATA (Serial Advanced Technology attachment) is serial, as it's name suggests, and uses 7 pins for data transfer, and 15 pins for it's power.

If a laptop uses IDE drives, it will only have a Parallel drive port on the motherboard, and obviously, logic dictates that a Serial drive won't work on a Parallel connector, pin arrangement aside.

Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can get all kinds of active SATA bridges and adapters, but none of them would fit in a laptop, and if there's IDE anywhere in the chain, it's limited to that speed anyway. A connection is only as fast as it's slowest section.

 

[btm8595]

thank you. now im not very experienced in computers yet so correct me if what im saying doesn't make sense or is wrong. is there anyway that i can upgrade my hard drive to run faster or more rpm's. or is it my processor that is making it run slowly. my laptop has 2 Intel Pentium 4 processors at 3.2 ghz each. from what im told thats pretty good. all i know is that my laptop takes forever to load levels and startup windows. so is there anything i can do about it or do i have to wait 10 mins each time i want to play games.

 

[JCB1]

in a laptop you can not do it. If it was a desktop you could use adaptors (IDE to SATA) or even buy a SATA PCI card. But laptops have limited space and there are no room for adaptors or expansion cards

 

[~Darkseeker~]

I believe PATA/IDE has a maximum transmission speed of around 133MB/s. That's still pretty fast as far as transfers will go. you might just have a really crappy/slow/low RPM drive.

 

[strollin]

It's likely your laptop has a 4800rpm or 5400rpm HDD. If so, you could replace it with a 7200rpm drive for a small performance increase. What brand/model is your laptop?

 

[btm8595]

my laptop is an alienware area51 m7700 how do i check to see how many rpm's my hard drive runs at?

 

[wolfeking]

its 5400 RPM
Alienware Area-51 m7700 Specs - Laptops - CNET Reviews

I know you can get IDE laptop drives faster, but my main source of info (newegg) currently shows that they dont have any above 4200.

 

[setishock]

Check Microcenter.com