Quick question...

[icp222]

I will be changing computers soon, and want to keep several GBs of various bits and bobs (My Documnets, movies and so forth). Current HDD interface is ATA-100, so I was thinking abOOt buying a cheapy 20GB IDE drive, and setting it as a slave and copying the files. That bit. Easy. What I don't know about, is whether I can then set that 20GB IDE drive as a slave to a SATA drive on my new rig to copy the files there?!?

NOTE: I can't just use my current HDD, as I have to sell current PC to afford a new one.

[Nox]

You thought about burning the stuff onto cd's or a dvd ? You *should* be able to make the machine boot off the SATA rather than the IDE, but it really depends on what the BIOS of your new computer will allow.

Nox

[Taz]

SATA does not have the concept of Master/Slave drives AFAIK. Hence, you could just plug in the 20GB IDE drive into the IDE interface on your new rig. Have the bootable drive as the SATA drive. Your 20GB drive should appear as drive D: and just copy the stuff you saved onto the C: drive and then remove the 20GB drive from the new system.

It might be more useful to buy a USB 2.5" drive enclosure off E-Bay (assuming your 20GB drive will be 2.5") and using USB to connect the drive to your current rig and your new rig. For a small extra cost it will give you much more versatility now and in the future.

Other options:

- Backup your stuff onto a DVD disc(s). That's probably the cheapest option. From your sig it appears you have a DVD writer.
- Find someone with an iRiver (or similar) music player with 20GB/40GB capacity and plug it into your current system. It just appears as a drive via USB and backup onto that.

[Edit]: Just missed previous post from Nox so some duplication.

[Rave]

What they said. Also note that you can't read and write on an IDE channel at the same time so copying from master to slave might be quite slow, as the data has to be read in chunks to memory, then written back to the destination drive before another chunk is read etc. You're better off unplugging one of your optical drives, putting the copy hard disc in it's place temporarily, and then doing the copying- that way you'll be copying from the primary channel to the secondary channel and it'll be much quicker.

For that reason, I actually have my DVD-Rom as Primary slave on the same channel as my HD, and my CDRW as Secondary master- that way I can do on-the-fly CD copies at 44x with no slowdowns and no buffer underruns. It works well.

[Allen]

For that reason, I actually have my DVD-Rom as Primary slave on the same channel as my HD, and my CDRW as Secondary master- that way I can do on-the-fly CD copies at 44x with no slowdowns and no buffer underruns. It works well.

I always used to do that too, didn't really notice a difference except when copying discs and moving really big files.

Now I have 2 SATA HDD's I don't have that worry, and my DVD-ROM and DVD-RW are using the 2 IDE channels therefore eliminating the worry about master and slave.

Aren't there SATA optical drives, or is there just no need? Would be nice to replace the still bulky rounded cables with little SATA cables.

[Nox]

I think there are only a couple of SATA optical drives, MSI springs to mind for some reason, but it only works properly off an ICH5 sata port, well this was a year ago anyway. I'm actually pretty suprised more manufacturers haven't been making them, for exactly that reason - tidyness!

Nox

[Rave]

I think the problem is that the SATA controller needs to support ATAPI, and not many of them do for some reason. Since current optical drives aren't bandwidth limited by even ATA-33, there's really no great impetus to switch them to SATA- the smaller cables are the only benefit.

[arthurleung]

I always used to do that too, didn't really notice a difference except when copying discs and moving really big files.

Now I have 2 SATA HDD's I don't have that worry, and my DVD-ROM and DVD-RW are using the 2 IDE channels therefore eliminating the worry about master and slave.

Aren't there SATA optical drives, or is there just no need? Would be nice to replace the still bulky rounded cables with little SATA cables.

Instead of going SATA for Optical Drives, switching to USB2 is a much easier (and cheaper) solution.

Converter price: SATA = USB2.0 for a simple one, and SATA external kit is much more expensive.
Speed: SATA is enough, USB2.0 is enough too.(Unless someone is making 20X or faster write speed)
Cable: USB2.0 cables are actually even thinner than SATA
Power: Same. You can use SATA internally.
Portability: USB2.0 can plug-n-play, while most SATA devices are not
CPU Usage: SATA have a lower CPU usage, but how often will you use your optical drive?
Ports: SATA ports are expensive (10 quids for an extra port), while you can get loads of USB2.0 ports cheaply (and new motherboards comes with 10!)

[chimpyw]

what about connect them both and try using a linux livecd to copy the files from one to the other something like knoppix or slax will do the job. Providing they are not formatted in NTFS you can read/write and whatnot.

.....Plus you get an experience with linux which is always good