ide?!?!?

[SE14man]

Just boughht a drive which i thought would be IDE but i looked at the sockets on the drive and its got a little slow with 4 pins and then a really wide on when looking at it standing up u can just see this long black line but when u turn the drive round u get these metal lines so bascially its not a frigging IDE drive like it said it was because it doesnt have IDE connectors.
So what is it?
Do i need to buy special cables to fit it?
It's really really annoying ive been waiting a month and its the wrong friggin drive!!

[SE14man]

How do i run a Serial ATA drive from a PC?
Do i need special cables for it??

[harley2ride]

If your pc does not support sata, then just send the drive back and request the correct drive. If it does support sata, all you need is a sata cable.

[SE14man]

Im getting a drive enclosure where i can put the sta drive in and use it as USB to the PC?
Is this ok 2 do??

[harley2ride]

I'm not sure if it will work, but it seems silly to pay the extra money for a sata drive, and only be able to use it at ata speeds.

[junkmalle]

You can get external enclosures that can connect an SATA drive via USB2 or IEEE 1394 connections. Or you can use a SATA to EIDE converter interanally.

[SE14man]

I heard that mny moterboard might have a Sata connectiono n it.
I need the manual or everest software.
Would SATA be a lot different than IDE?
Whats the difference can u explain?
I dont really wanna send it back and wait for anotherm onth cosi m an impatient guy..lol

[junkmalle]

Some SATA vs EIDE info:

http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/l0907/41l07/41l07.asp

Most motherboards made in the last few years have SATA controllers and connectors. Here's what SATA cables looks like:

http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/sata-cables.htm

You may also need an adaptor for the power:

http://www.cpuser.com.tw/image/SATA-Power-15P.gif

[ROF]

Most Maxtor drives offer both Sata Power and Molex Power Connections.

What might help is if we knew what drive you purchased and what motherboard you plan to pair it with?

Sata 1's are 150mb/s or only slightly faster than Ide 133's. Sata 2's are 300mb/s are much quieter, have a larger cache(in most cases), and are super fast. Sata 3's, which I haven't seen yet are supposed to be 600mb/s. Which drive and model number Sata do you have?

[harley2ride]

If your MB does support sata, a sata cable is fairly inexpensive, and sata drives are a bit quicker than ata. Not a mind blowing difference, but on large encodes, or when transferring large files, you will see the difference.

[ROF]

Actually in a well maintained system the drives operate (SATA Vs. PATA) at very similiar paces from my observations. The difference between the two is noticeable in unmaintained systems where files are fragmented. Most SATAs spin at the same rate as their PATA cousins. What does make the difference is a larger cache and transfer rate for bursted files(ie. encoding processes).