Need Help with STA drive on Abit Motherboard

Without realizing it I inadvertantly purchased a Western Digital SATA drive instead of an ATA. My Abit AV8 (version 1) is currently set up with three ATA drives one of which I had intended to replace with the new drive. I know nothing about SATA. I assume I would need a SATA cable for the new drive while keeping the ATA cable for my two remaining hard drives and the CD. Can both the new SATA and two of my existing ATA drives and one CD drive all exist together? What gets plugged in where? HELP!!!!!!

 

This link contains the technical specifications of the Abit AV8 mobo.

To answer your questions, yes you will need a cable.

http://www.usb-ware.com/images/sata18ra1-l.gif

This is what they look like. They usually come with a HDD, so I'm surprised that you wouldn't have one!

Yes, your SATA and PATA drives should be able to coexist. You will need to check in your BIOS to confirm.

You also have the options of RAID 0/1! If you were to buy another, identical drive you could implement an array. RAID 0 stripes a volume, writing data equally to each HDD, so they can be read/written to sychronously, boosting performance. RAID 1 mirrors a volume, writing identical data to each HDD. This slightly impacts performance, but provides data redundancy.

You should be able to see connectors for them right on your motherboard. If you really want to play it safe, check your motherboard's manual (probably on the abit website if you're missing it) and make a plan of attack. Good luck!

 

The WD SATA drive didn't come with a cable? I just got one Sunday and it had one, a combination power and data cable. If yours didn't come with a cable you'll have to use one like in Mada_Milty's pic and also use a 4-pole power cable.