A sata HD is my next investment. How much of a difference in performance can I expect? Right now I'm using a Maxtor 160 8mb 7200 IDE. It has some age so I'll prob be replacing soon.
After i buy my new cpu\mobo\gfx card and my ram i will be buying a sata drive as i hear there good but i also hear lots of folk with installation probs
im using 2 western digital raptors raid 0 sata . this is the fastest setup i have used to date but the sata cables are kinda crappy and dont like to stay plugged in too well . i have bumped these cables while cleaning the machine and it was enough to cause a bad connection .
SATA HDD's rock! And so do Plextor SATA DVD drives! BUT your mobo must be able to handle. I have an Asus A8N-E which is super and gives me SATA RAID. Running a pair of 300G Maxtor's striped. Incredibly easy to install - plug it in - it works. Period. Ditto with the Plexy - but again my mobo was ready for them. Comes with Nvidia nForce 4 Ultra chipset. Rock solid!
I'm currently using an IDE HD, my mobo has SATA capability. I would like to install a new SATA HD and still use my old IDE drives. Is this possible?
you can still use your ide drive with a sata drive . just set the sata drive as the first boot device in the bios if you are planning on putting your os on it .