I'm going to be buying a new large capacity (prob 160Gb) hard disc soon and I'm thinking it might be wise to get a SATA drive rather than sticking with IDE.
I know there isn't much of a speed difference at the moment, but if I buy a 160Gb drive I'm likely to want to keep it for at least 1 round of major upgrades in the next couple of years. Looking at motherboards already I can see SATA becoming more commonplace than IDE, so this seems the sensible decision.
My current PC is pretty dated, but still fine for what I use it for - Athlon XP1800, Gigabyte somethingorother motherboard, 512Mb PC2100 plus peripheral items.
My mobo is the current weak link, it was outdated when I got it and it's limiting my processor upgrade choices and it doesn't support SATA at all. So I'll need to get a new one. First question - anyone got a recommendation for a Socket A motherboard with IDE and SATA support? All I need is something that is compatible with my XP1800 and will offer me the chance to upgrade to something significantly faster at some point - I'm not worried about any other features like 6 channel sound or whatever. I was thinking of something like this
Before anyone suggests throwing the lot out and buying an Athlon64 or P4, I can't afford it, so don't. An XP3000 or Sempron would be more than sufficient for me for many years to come.
Next question - are there any issues about running an IDE HD and a SATA HD on the same system? I've got a 120Gb Maxtor at the minute and I want to keep it and just add the 160Gb SATA to it. Is there anything I should or shouldn't do - should the SATA be the master, should I install XP onto the SATA instead of running it on the IDE?
It's going to be used for video editing (more ram is on the cards as well before anyone panics about the rest of my specs) so ideally I'd like to just have it as a second drive and leave it pristine apart from what I'm working on, but would I be better off the other way around?
Any views, opinions and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've looked around various websites and forums, but most people seem to just upgrade en masse and spend lots of money all at once, which I'm trying to avoid - I just want a new motherboard and HD for now.
I know there isn't much of a speed difference at the moment, but if I buy a 160Gb drive I'm likely to want to keep it for at least 1 round of major upgrades in the next couple of years. Looking at motherboards already I can see SATA becoming more commonplace than IDE, so this seems the sensible decision.
My current PC is pretty dated, but still fine for what I use it for - Athlon XP1800, Gigabyte somethingorother motherboard, 512Mb PC2100 plus peripheral items.
My mobo is the current weak link, it was outdated when I got it and it's limiting my processor upgrade choices and it doesn't support SATA at all. So I'll need to get a new one. First question - anyone got a recommendation for a Socket A motherboard with IDE and SATA support? All I need is something that is compatible with my XP1800 and will offer me the chance to upgrade to something significantly faster at some point - I'm not worried about any other features like 6 channel sound or whatever. I was thinking of something like this
Before anyone suggests throwing the lot out and buying an Athlon64 or P4, I can't afford it, so don't. An XP3000 or Sempron would be more than sufficient for me for many years to come.
Next question - are there any issues about running an IDE HD and a SATA HD on the same system? I've got a 120Gb Maxtor at the minute and I want to keep it and just add the 160Gb SATA to it. Is there anything I should or shouldn't do - should the SATA be the master, should I install XP onto the SATA instead of running it on the IDE?
It's going to be used for video editing (more ram is on the cards as well before anyone panics about the rest of my specs) so ideally I'd like to just have it as a second drive and leave it pristine apart from what I'm working on, but would I be better off the other way around?
Any views, opinions and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've looked around various websites and forums, but most people seem to just upgrade en masse and spend lots of money all at once, which I'm trying to avoid - I just want a new motherboard and HD for now.
Comment