What is the difference between IDE and SATA hard drives?

Hello,

I'm trying to advance my knowledge of computers to todays standards. I built my own pc recently and used what I guess you can all say is yesterdays standars. My pc is a 1.4Ghz P3 with an IDE drive, etc.

I want to build a new pc soon and I would like to know what and why is there IDE and SATA? What is the difference? What does it mean or stand for?

Any information would be helpful. I assume that a SATA hard drive can only go on a certain motheboard or something?



Thanks for your replies!

 

These two terms simply refer to the standard of interface data transfer related to the particular device...IDE being a form of parallel ATA transfer and Sata standing for serial ATA transfer (the later being the more modern method and promotes higher data transfer rates. ie Its faster)

 

Another thing, that I found out in the last 2-3 weeks, is that the pinout of the cable connection at the back of the drive is completely different between the 2.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=105861 might help as there is a link to show the IDE adapter. Bazza

 

This may help a little,

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum105/319.htm

 

Great link, tunered.
It helps a lot, covering the tech aspects as well as the difference in the connectors. (scroll down a bit for this info). Bazza

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IDE is old whereas SATA 150Gbs is new. In everyday's work, there's no difference between them. However, if you copy large files between 2 SATA drives or 2 partitions on an SATA drive, you'll see a diff. Same for imaging a partition.

The motherboard must support SATA to use SATA drives. Most new boards support SATAII (2) 300Gbs which is backward compatible with SATA. It'd be best to get SATAII motherboards & harddisks. A large # of new boards have only ONE IDE & 2-10 SATA connectors. So the IDE connects to 1 or 2 CD/DVD drives.