Hard drives, ide or sata which is better?

[bigmuddy11]

please help me decide which to buy,
I need to get a new harddrive and do not know which is the better way to go,
i do encoding/ transcoding playing 3d games and general office work, i just want a reliable fast harddrive not real concerned with the cost as long as the money is well spent, please tell me the difference between the two drives as i have only ever had ide hard drives before, thanks.

[Clunk]

go with sata...have a look at the samsungs, cheap, quiet and reliable. if money and noise arent issues, then get a raptor

[chuckskull]

Yup SATA all the way, SATA300 if your board supports it. If you really want speed then go for a 74 or 150gig Raptor (hell if money really isn't an issue get 2 and RAID them), otherwise 250gig SATA drives go for £50 now.

[Hans Voralberg]

SATA is newer and so much more comfotable to use in term of messing with cables and stuffs. Raptor 150 x 2 is the way to go with speed lol, that would be incredibly fast

[bigmuddy11]

ok how do i raid them? i have heard about having hard drives on a raid but don't know how to, thanks for the advice, will definately go for sata and if my motherboard won't support it I will look at getting a new one as well, can you look at my m/b and tell me if you know if it will support it?
m/b is a gigabyte 865PE-A7
not by choice came with the system, now wanting to make it a nice fast beast.

[frazered]

your mobo should have some raid drivers and software that came with it

[chuckskull]

Are you sure it's a gigabyte board cant seem to find any reference to it, did find an ECS one with the same name.

As for RAID, just google "RAID how to" and spend a couple of hours reading.

[kalniel]

There's no difference in performance, but SATA are easier to cable. Your motherboard does support SATA.

[Voronus]

SATA is more futureproof too. Eventually IDE will be phased out from motherboard support so you could arrive in a situation where you have to buy new hardiscs when you upgrade.

[dave87]

Yup SATAs the way to go

However it wont be so bad for IDE drives, as you can get IDE-SATA adapters which allow you to run the IDE drives on a SATA Channel. However, if you are buying a drive now, get a SATA one.

[mike_w]

Yup, if you're getting a new drive, you may as well get SATA seeing as IDE will disappear sometime in the future.

[Rookie]

Yeah, SATA is definately the way to go - in fact it's the only way to go if you want a high-speed drive like a Raptor.

[kalniel]

Which are ironically IDE drives with a SATA converter/connector (apart from the most recent ones that is)

[shaithis]

Do not RAID using a motherboards on-board controller......they are inherantly crap for many reasons.