IDE vs SATA for music drive

[starbuck]

Think my existing IDE hard drive has given up and want to get a new one just for music(300gb plus).

Will there be any difference(in speed or anything else) between a SATA drive and an IDE one?

Can anyone recommend a drive?

[Dark Horse]

Sata drives are technically faster although in practice it isn't by much, probably less than 5mb/s. If you are only storing music on it then its not exaclty high performance so I wouldn't get too excited over sata or sata II.

Sata drives have ncq support and smaller cables but other than that there isn't a massive diference in features. Even the newest drives these days still come in IDE flavour.

Seagate drives are good as they have a 5 year warranty as standard so you can be pretty confident of thier reliability. For your needs almost any drive will suffice so its personal prefence who you chose. I'd just go for the cheapest per gb.

[funnelhead]

Just for the sake of future proofing, and the fact that your NEXT motherboard will have more SATAII than IDE ..... well id get a sata drive....i mean theres not much of a price premium anymore is there??

IDE channels are for optical drives ...

[Lee H]

I'd got for SATA too basically as the cabling ensures better airflow as its neater.

Also, nearly every SATA drive now supports NCQ which is a lot better at reading fragmented data as opposed to drives that do not support NCQ and this is fine for storing Mp3's upon.

As for drives, I would recommend a seagate, or samsung as both these makes are quiet in operation

[Workaholic]

You forgot to mention that after a certain length of IDE cable (was it 45cm) you get speed decrease whereas this doesn't occur for SATA cables.

[kalniel]

True but I'd be majorly impressed if anyone managed to situate a hard drive more than 45cm away from the connector on the motherboard!

IDE drives still tend to be a little bit cheaper, but don't perform any worse. IMO the main consideration is ease of assembly and airflow. Both of which will depend on your situation (are you likely to be changing other components often?) You can also get round IDE cables that help with airflow, but they're still more chunky to fit than SATA.

[Workaholic]

True but I'd be majorly impressed if anyone managed to situate a hard drive more than 45cm away from the connector on the motherboard!

IDE drives still tend to be a little bit cheaper, but don't perform any worse. IMO the main consideration is ease of assembly and airflow. Both of which will depend on your situation (are you likely to be changing other components often?) You can also get round IDE cables that help with airflow, but they're still more chunky to fit than SATA.

EASY, cable needs to go AROUND existing power cables and data cable blocked by other IO hardware such as CD/DVD drives when using a 53/4 HDD Caddy, Floppies etc.... 90cm cable is just long enough, and of course the shorter connection 30cm away from motherboard connects to the HDD.

[ahat]

FWIW, I don't notice too much difference in speed between my 7200rpm IDE and my 10krpm sata raptor. Boo!

[kalniel]

EASY, cable needs to go AROUND existing power cables and data cable blocked by other IO hardware such as CD/DVD drives when using a 53/4 HDD Caddy, Floppies etc.... 90cm cable is just long enough, and of course the shorter connection 30cm away from motherboard connects to the HDD.

Well that's why I said hard drive. It's easy enough to get other IDE connections that far away, but the short end should be going to the hdd first.