Serial ATA hard drive w' ULTRA ATA mobo header?

[darkelf]

I've been wondering if this has been tried yet.

I have two DiamondMax 9 Serial ATA drives on their way (1/2 terabyte, yay).

Right now I have a mobo that does not have SATA connectors.

I see three options: purchase a SATA card (best interm choice), get a new mobo w' SATA, and a third option:

Has anybody ever thought to use a SATA/UltraATA converter (like a RocketHead) installed *backwards*? Instead of plugging the converter into an 40-pin ATA drive header, plug the converter into the 40-pin header on the motherboard and run the SATA cable between the converter and the fancy HDD.

If I had an older(cheep) SATA drive I'd test this myself.

Thoughts on this anybody?

[Piccoro]

Isn't there converter for that? To use SATA drive on PATA controllers.
BTW what you suggest won't work. They work one way.
There are motherboards out there that have SATA but they dont have their own bus while other newer boards give it it's own bus.
Although getting the SATA pci expantion card is a good idea.

From what I've seen PATA drives start out around 50-60 transfer rate and finish around 30s while SATA start at 60-70 and finish around high 40s - 50s. Those are transfer rates with the controller on the motherboard.

[darkelf]

I haven't yet seen a converter that works with SATA drives, only the converters that let you use regular (usually cheeper) ATA133 drives with SATA connections on a controller card and/or mobo. You don't see any increase in speed (usually slightly lower performance due to the conversion between parallel and serial).

I kinda figured you couldn't just reverse that converter. I suppose this will be a non-issue in a few years, we will all have SATA standard and if we don't SATA controllers will be even cheaper than the already-cheap they are now.

thx for the reply

[birdygal]

I am not familiar with Serial ATA but my Motherboard has 2 ports onboard along with 2 IDE which currently are filled with an ATA100 , ATA133 HD Pioneer Burner and Zip drive. Can I purchase something to move my ATA133 HD onto the Serial ATA port to free up one of my IDE slots, I would like to add another DVD rom Drive .

[RabidDog]

you need a sata-pata converta

[darkelf]

Yes Birdyg, you can.

If you have a Serial-ATA port on your motherboard (small black connectors with 7 conductors), you can take nearly any regular 40-pin IDE device and run it on these connectors.

You will need to get:

1) Serial ATA cable
2) Serial ATA to Parallel ATA converter

Here is the Highpoint rockethead:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/rh.htm

There are many converters like this out there, on pricewatch and on ebay. Price range is usually $10-$20.

I have 3 rockethead models I purchased in bulk on ebay for $22. They work well for me.

-elf

[panoplos]

Hi,
I have 2 SATA port on my motherboard and I purchase 2 SATA to PATA converter and I connect 2 Pioneer DVD/RW 106 on SATA ports.
But I connet and I get the message "atapi incompatible" and I cant get in to Windows.
When I disconnect the DVD/RW from the SATA is ok.

Anyone can help
Thanks

[pixel]

SATA to PATA

You say you have SATA to PATA, which means a SATA device connected to a PATA channel, and these only work one way as far as I know so you can't connect a PATA device to it.

If you got your words mixed up and mean PATA to SATA I think they will only work with hard drives anyway because SATA is designed for hard drives.

[panoplos]

I have converter that convert the SERIAL to PARALLER and it works fine with harddrives. But when I connect dvd/rw on the converter the bios find the divice but it stuck with the message "incompatible atapi".

[pixel]

I have converter that convert the SERIAL to PARALLER and it works fine with harddrives. But when I connect dvd/rw on the converter the bios find the divice but it stuck with the message "incompatible atapi".

Well, AFAIK S-ATA is only for hard drives, so to connect your DVD-RW to it you must be using it backwards, which someone above said was impossible as they only work properly one way.