StarTech.com IDE to SATA Hard Drive or Optical Drive Adapter Converter - 40-Pin PATA to 2.5" SATA HDD / SSD / ODD Converter (IDE2SAT2)

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Just my opinion though but look in the BIOS and see if there is an Option to make a SATA Drive the boot drive as that would remove the need for a Driver. After many days of IDE connection hard drives, there came the SATA hard drives which are meant to replace the IDE hard drives for their more efficient characteristics. SATA means ‘Serial Advanced Technology Attachment’. The main characteristic which differentiates SATA from PATA or IDE is that in SATA the information moves between the hard drive and motherboard as serial one, i. e. one bit after another. Under Device Manager, look for specifications in storage menu. If it says S-ATA or Serial ATA, it’s SATA. For IDE devices, it can say EIDE or just IDE. Summing Up

If you closely examine all of the factors described above, you will see that the SATA drivers are better than PATA drivers in almost all aspects. Why Do You Need to Connect to SATA? You have to install the hard drive into an open hard drive area or bay. This depends on the type of computer case. It usually requires just a little sliding into an open bay and normally a very simple procedure.

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SATA (right) and IDE (left) hard drives. The SATA hard drive has the data cable on the right and power cable on the left. The IDE data cable is ribbon-like (on the left)

Then, to the hard drive connection point, attach the free end of the converter cable. Depending on the connection point, sometimes it will be necessary to attach the free end of the cable to the IDE cable. Great, Now we have a formatted SATA drive and a partition for OPL ready for games. Game Installation IDE Hard Drive: It is one of the most elements that’s needed. You know by now what IDE is. IDE hard drives are easily identifiable through their pin connection points usually. In most of the cases, the installation is by plugging it into the required component. It is needed to ensure a tight connection. As for the TRIM I’m really not sure how it would impact with a SSD Drive it really all depends on the ChipSet of the M’Board.SATA consists of an 8 mm wide wafer connector on each end and the cable has a 7-pin connector, 3 grounds and 4 active data lines in two pairs. It has the facility to attach only one drive and so Serial ATA does away with Master/Slave configurations. The SATA cables are up to 40 inches. So it is an advantage of SATA over IDE which is the management of cables and length of the cables connecting the hard drives and motherboard. When you have extra length in cables, more flexibility of the positions of the drive can be attained. While it is possible to make the necessary changes if drivers are required to run that type of drive it is a lot of messing around. Also if Windows has been loaded for more that 12 months it’s better to do a Clean Install so you can get rid of all the crud that clogs up the Registry.

You will feel when you will know about it that connecting the IDE hard drive to the SATA motherboard is a very easy task. It will take at most 10-20 minutes. Remember that the computer must be unplugged from any electrical connection. It may even work with a SATA Drive but not a SSD Drive as while these days they are interchangeable in the past they where not always so. Also the hardware always treats IDE Drives as the Default Master Drive and writes the Boot Loaded to that Drive so it’s important after the Clone to remove the IDE Drive before starting the system on the SSD Drive. SATA drives have an additional feature of Hot plugging which mean that even as the computer is running drives can be removed or added. Hard drives need a cable/connection for data and one for power. Parallel ATA only allows data cable lengths up to 18 in (457 mm) while SATA allows cable lengths up to 1 m (3.28 ft). eSATA cables can be 2 m in length. Data transfer speed for IDE ranges from 5MB/s up to 133MB/s (ATA100/133). The parallel wire transfer mode reached its limit with the speed of 133 MB/s.

IDE To SATA Converter

SATA took off where ATA stopped as far as speed is concerned. The first generation of SATA was 1.2 Gbit/s (150 MB/s; note that MB is mega bytes and Gb is giga bits) similar to PATA/133. Today the third generation of SATA (3.0) (released on May 27, 2009), 6 Gbit/s (600 MB/s) hard drives and motherboards are being used.