New Motherboard/Old Hard Drive Compatibility?

[jaq78]

I purchased and built a budget set up 2 years ago....



Current Hard Drive I have:

HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLAT80 (0A31611) 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive - OEM



Current Motherboard I have is:

ASRock 775Dual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 PRO ATX Intel Motherboard

Storage Spec says "PATA 2 x ATA100 4 Dev. Max" and works fine with the hard drive.



The new Motherboard I am looking at is:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

Storage Spec says "PATA 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358



Are the Gigabyte Motherboard and Hitachi Deskstar Hard drive compatible?
I understand that SATA would have been the better way to go at the time but I want to keep all of my information, photos, XP software etc. for the move.

I would greatly appreciate the help!

Thanks,

Josh

 

[jaq78]

No one?

 

[seboj]

Are the Gigabyte Motherboard and Hitachi Deskstar Hard drive compatible?

Yes.

 

[Toppam]

Hi jaq78

I went through a similar process a couple of years ago, and it was thanks to the same motherboard as your ASROCK that I was able to achieve it relatively painlessly.

I had a PATA hard drive 160GB, but wanted a bigger drive and it seemed like a good time to go to SATA. I bought the ASROCK because it has SATA and 2 x PATA connectors on the board, which allowed me to use the 2 types of drive together without having to go without either of my CD/DVD devices.

Most modern boards come with multiple SATA connectors, but only one IDE/PATA connector, which means that you either have to live without the PATA drive or put it on the same ribbon as the CD/DVD drive.

The particular problem with the ASRock board is that it only supports SATA I (150Mbps), which is half that of a SATA II Drive which supports a theoretical maximum of 300Mbps. However, there is no reason why you shouldn't use the Hitachi HDD on the new board, or a SATA II HDD on the old one.

That is an expensive Gigabite board you are buying and I think you should consider switching to SATA in the not distant future - you can pick up a good 500GB drive for well under £50 - see here for an example:

Seagate 500GB HDD at EBuyer

You could use this HDD as your system disk, then use the IDE HDD as an internal backup drive, though I eventually did away with mine in favour of 2 x 500GB internal drives and an external 320GB as a second backup.

Good luck

Toppam