IDE to Serial ATA Adapters

[4Ryan6]

Besides the fact of getting rid of the wide ribbon cabeling, would there be any advantages to using adapters to convert IDE to Serial ATA?

M/B wise if not running RAID what are the connection possibilities?

Would signal degradation, and loss DATA associated with the longer IDE cabeling exceeding the 18" threshold be eliminated, by using the adapters?

Is using the adapters a feasable idea, or a waste of money?

And has anyone done this themselves?




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[4Ryan6]

Come on you guys INPUT, Doesn't anyone know about this?

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[LumberJack]

I don't trust those adapters, they seem kinda sketch to me. But if you need ton's o'drives in a large mother of a case then the convenience of sata calbes is definitely a plus, if you can find any long ones out there. As fas as signals gow, the more stuff you pass a signal through the worse it gets so if anything adding adapters will only make things worse.

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[khha4113]

Doesn't anyone know about this?

What did you expect? Serial ATA is relative new at this time. Most people don't have experience of them.

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[Twitch]

It appears there may be some advantage in SATA controllers, especially in terms of minimum transfer rates. However, right now it's impossible to say if that's just in the on-board controller, or if it has something to do with the technology on the hard-drive. I've been keeping an eye on SATA because I think the technology has a lot of potential, but I don't know if anyone can give you a definitive answer right now.

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[4Ryan6]

What did you expect? Serial ATA is relative new at this time. Most people don't have experience of them.

Well I figured someone like Crashman would stop by sooner or later and inform me of how stupid a question I had asked, I know its new technology but someone out here has to know some solid info on the subject. My main idea is if the adapters wouldn't slow the transfer rates, getting rid of the ribbon cables would be a great air flow improvement in the case, and there are quite a few companys now making the adapters, including MSI and SOYO.

And the cables are shipped with the adapters

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[4Ryan6]

The controllers run from the PCI interface, the adapters can plug straight into the IDE ports, thus eliminating the ribbon cable, but at what DATA speed cost. I was hoping to run across someone that had actually tried it, according to the specs I've found so far the adapters run at the transfer speed of the hardrives, so seemingly no lost DATA speed.



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[lhgpoobaa]

But rounded IDE canble can reduce the airflow interference too.
SATA is mostly an ease of use thing. 1 drive per 1 long non-length limited cable.


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[4Ryan6]

The main reason for the original flat ribbed ATA 66 was to avoid high speed data corruption, every other wire was a ground wire, which cut down the data corruption of the electromatic impulses created from electricity passing through the wires, affecting the adjacent wires. Are rounded cables using special shielded wires to prevent this corruption or just regular wires bound together?




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[lhgpoobaa]

Ive seen the IDE rounded cables done a number of ways:

1. All the wires just bunched together
2. The wires split into sets of two (active data line plus its ground wire
3. Each and every active + ground twisted together
4. Copper/aluminium shielding over the top
5. Combo of paired lines and shielding.

I dont think it makes too much difference, but its probably better that one gets the shielded cables where the active and ground are kept together... ESPECIALLY if you get cables that are longer than the standard 18".


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[4Ryan6]

Do you know of anyplace to get 18" cables that the master and slave connector are spaced at 3" apart instead of 6" apart, I'm asking because I've got a Cheiftec case and MSI KT4VL M/B and the primary and secondary IDE ports on the M/B are at the bottom or furthest distance from the 5 1/2" drive bays.




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[lhgpoobaa]

No sorry... If you find a place that makes their won you oculd ask them.

However i believe there are other limitations to IDE cables apart from maximum length...
like minimum mobo connector to slave connector length of 10" etc.

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[Teq]

Think about it this way... you can use the adaptors, but it still isn't going to go any faster than the IDE channel can deal with. And since you would be using adaptors at both ends, you'd be tripling the number of connections to give you problems.

I can see using the adaptors in two situations:

Where you have a SATA drive and an IDE motherboard.
or
Where you have a SATA motherboard and an IDE drive.

Otherwise, stay with what works... and keep your hard earned cash.


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[Teq]

If you have a local computer store that makes their own cables, just get them to squash a new connector on where you need it.


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[4Ryan6]

We don't have any local shops that make their own cables, I made the cable I'm using right now, but I made it by removing and relocating the slave connector, works perfectly but I'm concerned about the pin holes left behind from the old slave connectors location and would just like to get a cable specially made, any shops local to you make their own cables.




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[lhgpoobaa]

I wish someone would do benchies to find out if there is any performance loss while using a Pata to Sata converter...

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[khha4113]

I just use SATA converter for my IBM 120GXP on Abit NF7-S for few days. So far, I haven't seen any difference of performance between SATA and PATA as in Sandra's bench (both of them show ~31,000)

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