IDE/SATA convertor

[GoodVillain]

I looked on New Egg but the reviews would kinda conflict with the product descriptions.

I have a IDE only motherboard and I want to have a SATA 640 gig hard drive as a bootable master and a 120 gig IDE as the slave. I am welcome to a converter via the IDE cable or a PCI card. Just as long as it works. Anyone been down this road?

 

[Atomic Rooster]

There really aren't too many choices available. You could either use a SATA PCI controller card such as this: SYBA SD-SATA-4P PCI SATA Controller Card or use one of these little doodads: SABRENT SBT-STDB IDE Ultra ATA-100/133 to SATA Port Mini Converter

I've used the IDE to SATA converters with good results. I have no experience wit the SATA to IDE though.

 

[GoodVillain]

Thanks. But will they boot an OS off the SATA drive? And which of the two options you gave will have the better data rate? I assume using a converter from the IDE cable will run as fast as an IDE drive but I wondered if PCI is just as good. Not planning on hard core data transfers but the more data sent faster the better.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

You'll get pretty much the same performance with either one. A PCI slot is capable of a 133 MB/s transfer rate, the same as an IDE interface. I'm sure you can boot to a drive on the PCI card and I know you could boot using the drive adapter.