advice on adding a hard drive
 

Hello, my computer has a 160gb serial ATA hard drive in my computer.
I have an 80gb (IDE hookup) laying around, thinking of adding it on.

I only see one IDE port on my motherboard, (which the DVD drive uses) so the 80gb would have to share this IDE port. Does this sound like a bad idea?
I also don't know how the whole master/slave configuration would need to be setup since it's with a DVD drive.

I don't really have to do this, and figured I would ask you guys/gals first.
Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated!
I have been reading about this stuff today but as usual, having a hard time finding info on my specific situation.
thanks:)

Doesn't sound too bad. Just make sure the faster device, probably the hard drive, has it's pins set as master and the other is set to slave.

IDE with SATA will be slower.

I have IDE drives on my computer and it is a noticeable difference when saving/accessing from them.

Of course if you want the storage, and it's available, it will work. It will just be a bit slow when accessing.

Do you mean just "to the SATA drive" or "SATA to IDE (vice versa)" transfers? If the SATA is connected to a designated SATA port on the mobo, why would pure SATA transfers slow down...


I must be reading something wrong.

Copying something from the IDE to the SATA and vice versa, would be much slower than if you had SATA to SATA.

same as if you saved a file to the IDE and timed it, and compared to the SATA speed. You'd find it's overall slower.

I also find that when my OS does a drive "explore" all drives, when the IDE is attached it's much slower than when it is not.

OK this makes much more sense. I know about the drive explore, but did not considered that when thinking about pure to-SATA writes. Still, the pure to SATA speed should remain unchanged, no?

From my experience, copying anything from IDE to IDE, or IDE to SATA has always been slow. IDE purely sucks. Accessing from SATA is not a problem, its the transfer into IDE that's a bitch especially if your processor's slow.

Hmm, probably shouldn't thread jack but hey, why not, I'm looking to do the same thing too. I have a DELL Optiplex and recently my computer has been acting up, I know it's not to do with the software because the machine runs very well. The USB ports arent registering anything. I cant connect any USB device, mouse, keyboard, flash disk, printer!!! Secondly, it cant seem to pick up my SATA drive in the BIOS, it says storage device not found. Yes, I am connecting them properly. Any views on this.........

My advice depends on whether or not it's still under warranty. If it is, send it in and have them fix it for you.

If it isn't, I would suggest that the case, properly modified, will make a lovely aquarium.

Regarding the OP, why not drop $40 on an enclosure and turn the old IDE disk into a USB drive?

you know I had that in my original entry, but somehow I erased that option of IDE/USB housing....

The hard drive exploring will still be slow. I have a 500GB WD with a power down setting after prolonged periods of no use, and every time I open My Computer, it boots up and takes extra time before the hard drives show up in Windows.

yeah, I just planned to use it as extra storage and don't mind if it's a bit slower so long as it doesn't slow anything else down.
thanks for the responses, I got it working...sort of.
Now I just have to figure out why BIOS says it's a 80gb but I can only use 32gb of it so far. Going to work on that today.

What filesystem are you formatting it in? And are you using windows to do that? I would recommend Swiss Knife for anything other than NTFS.

Is the drive partitioned and formatted correctly?

A hard drive on the USB bus will be slower than on the IDE bus. Putting it in an external enclosure is more about convenience than performance; I find it highly useful to have a device that allows for back up and transfer of files across multiple platforms and in different locations.

I didn't say it was terrible, just mentioning that this happens.

You are likely using FAT, try using NTFS for a filesystem.

FAT 32, I used Swiss Knife and it gave me the rest of my storage space in a new drive letter.
Thanks!:thumbsup:

So are there now two partitions or just one in FAT32?

I have drive E: which is 31.4gb and Swiss Knife added F: which is 43.0gb and they both say FAT 32

You should be able to format the whole disc as one partition.

OK, I got it all on E: drive now.
Took a few minutes to figure out how to use the program.
I set it at NTFS, not sure how much difference it makes.

It depends on whether or not you want a file system that has native compatibility with many OS'. FAT32 is a good one for that but it lacks in other areas. NTFS is good because it supports journaling- helps prevent errors to your hard drive in the case of power failure- while FAT32 does not.

Unless you dual boot linux and windows, or plan on putting that hard drive in a mac machine, you shouldn't have to worry.

NTFS is a real filesystem, FAT32 is lacking in quite a few areas.

Even if you use Linux at some point, NTFS is safe to write on now. Not sure about Mac, it wouldn't surprise me if they could handle it now too.