Solution
Open Device Manager (My Computer - Properties - Hardware - Device Mangler). In Disk drives, click on the Disk, select Properties, and look in the Details tab. Device Instance ID or Hardware IDs will tell you.

razabc

Honorable
Mar 6, 2012
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0
10,510
Well everything says "IDE" there. Not a mention of "SATA".
But I've been told my HD is SATA since it's a pretty new laptop (2 years) and IDE isn't used since about 5 years ago.

So, is it SATA or IDE?
 
You are right, I am wrong. Sorry about that.

Device Manager will show the model of the drive - mine is st980813as. You can also see that by running msinfo32 (an XP tool), navigating down to Storage - Disks.

A Web search on the model number revealed that this is a ST980813AS Momentus 7200.2 SATA 3.0 Gb/s 80 GB Laptop Hard ....

So try it that way, and I'm sorry that I mis-directed you.