SATA and IDE, both or ditch IDE

[redrovermine7]

I just opened my 3 boxes from NewEgg.com. Inside are the parts I ordered to build my son's new computer for his B'Day present. The parts (on my $1,100 budget) are as follows:

Proc: Intel P4 640 3.2.GHz 2MB L2 Cache
MoBo: Asus 925XE w/DDr2 slots
Memory:Corsair (ValueRam) 1Gb DDR2 SDRAM (2x512) 240 PIN 667 (PC5300)
Graphic Card:ATI X800XL 256MB PCI-E
XP Professional
Antec Neopower 480W PS
Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black steel Mid Tower


I have built many IDE systems in the past but this board has SATA and 1 IDE Channel. This of course limits me to 2 IDE drives, but what setups can a Combo board have? How many SATA drives? Can you combine and have the 2 IDE and 2 or 3 SATA devices? Should I go buy a SATA hard drive and SATA optical?( I have his old WD IDE 200GB HD and Dual layer DVD Writer) Would he see a difference in FPS gaming and modeling? Please give me any advice and let me know your setups. I have gotten some good advice from this forum (and an occasional stupid one).

 

[OCybrManO]

I'm running 4 IDE and 1 SATA at the moment. I'm going to be adding another SATA drive soon. I haven't had a single problem with a mixed setup, yet.

As far as I know, you can have as many drives as it will let you plug in... though, having enough drive bays for all of them helps. :E

 

[redrovermine7]

OCybrManO,
I have had a couple people tell me that with the Asus 925XE MoBo, you have one IDE on board so you can only hookup one HD and one optical drive. But board also has SATA, so does your MoBo have 2 IDE plugs? and how many SATA sockets?

 

[OCybrManO]

Yes, mine has two IDE channels... two drives per channel. I'd have to open it up again to see how many SATA dives it can support. It's either 2 or 4. If you have enough connections for the drives it shouldn't matter what combination of IDE and SATA drives you are using.

 

[duffers20]

I think that I would go for SATA hard drives and use the IDE channel for optical drives. I don't think you should have any problems with that setup.

 

[PickledGecko]

Although you can have any combination you want, I wouldn't combine the HD and a DVD Drive on the same cable. Drives on the same cable must go at the same speed, which will bring the speed of the HD down to the level of the DVD Drive. Also, its recommended for the best write performance that CD/DVD Writers are on a cable on their own.

It would probably be cheaper to replace the DVD Writer, but you could get a performance boost by buying a Raptor Hard Disk. Or maybe the cheapest option would be to buy an IDE expansion card.

If you do replace the HD, it seems like such a waste giving up on that 200GB HD, there are external caddy's you can get that let you use internal HD's as USB2/Firewire external HD's.

 

[holydeadpenguins]

Ewww intel. The IDE controller can only access one PATA drive at a time if their on the same channel. Which makes transferring data from one drive to another on the same channel useless. SATA doesn't have this problem. As long as your optical and hdd are on different channels your fine.

 

[gweedodogg69]

i'd use the SATA for the OS and games and the IDE for like...Office applications such as MS Office.

 

[redrovermine7]

Thanks for the great info, I'll just get a SATA HD in case what PickledGeko and Holydeadpengiuns say is true. Thanks OCybrManO, duffers20 and gweedodogg69, your info was still greatly appreciated. Redrovermine7