OWC Debuts First SandForce-Based IDE/ATA SSD

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OWC said its new SandForce-based line of SSDs is the first and fastest to utilize an IDE/ATA connection.

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Kevin Parrish
Kevin Parrish
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.

18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jprahman
    Sounds like a great way to breath new life into an old P4/Athlon 64 machine. However, at those prices it may not be worth it.
    Reply
  • bv90andy
    first and fastest
    if it's the first, of course it's the fastest.
    Reply
  • ProDigit10
    though they forgot to mention that some IDE cables allow only upto 150, 133, 100 and 66MB/s.
    Your 280MB/s burst rate won't benefit much from it, but perhaps random reads and writes will!
    Reply
  • ProDigit10
    jprahmanSounds like a great way to breath new life into an old P4/Athlon 64 machine. However, at those prices it may not be worth it.40 and 60GB seem like a good investment for an old pc.
    Remember back in those days (the days of the IDE where the days of Windows 95, NT, 98, 98e, milennium, and 2000) a harddrive of 40GB would cost as much as this ssd. Later in the windows XP era, drives had larger capacities, but you will want compatibility with FAT32 formatting table without partitioning the drive.
    Reply
  • techcurious
    Any PC that is so old that it does not have SATA is not worth upgrading with an SSD at these prices. A PC without SATA is what, about 5 years old at least?
    And what's the point of spending so much money on one of the best SSD's you can buy now, only to get a 3rd of it's performance now and then eventually upgrade your PC and get the full performance of the SSD later, in a year or so.. ? By then, this SSD will be so much slower than a current SSD by the time you get a new PC with SATA. Not to mention that the newer SSD's would be cheaper too!

    480GB for $1599... HAHAHAHAAA!! Instead of that upgrade, you could build a whole new pc with that money, that would outperform your No-SATA-Having-POS (even after an SSD upgrade) by about 10 Fold!
    Reply
  • jprahman
    ProDigit1040 and 60GB seem like a good investment for an old pc.Remember back in those days (the days of the IDE where the days of Windows 95, NT, 98, 98e, milennium, and 2000) a harddrive of 40GB would cost as much as this ssd. Later in the windows XP era, drives had larger capacities, but you will want compatibility with FAT32 formatting table without partitioning the drive.
    True. It just depends how much you want to spend on a new drive vs. building a new system.
    Reply
  • elkein
    Nah, not for me but maybe IDE are drives are still used in some legacy businesses, why upgrade now?
    Reply
  • Spanky Deluxe
    These drives will have a niche market for sure - for example an old database server that's still using 4 IDE drives in a raid setup (yes they do still exist - e.g. G4 Xserves). Some database servers really have no need for more CPU performance but would benefit from faster random access times. Getting a boss to sign off on four 60gb ATA SSD drives for $720 is far easier than getting them to sign off on a brand new server + four SSD drives.

    Of course, any home user stuck with an ATA PC and desperate for an SSD drive but not willing to buy a new computer will be better off buying a standard SATA SSD and a cheap SATA controller card.
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    they may not even need 4 SSDs, but, this indeed is a small market since scsi is used primarily by servers.

    Spanky DeluxeThese drives will have a niche market for sure - for example an old database server that's still using 4 IDE drives in a raid setup (yes they do still exist - e.g. G4 Xserves). Some database servers really have no need for more CPU performance but would benefit from faster random access times. Getting a boss to sign off on four 60gb ATA SSD drives for $720 is far easier than getting them to sign off on a brand new server + four SSD drives.Of course, any home user stuck with an ATA PC and desperate for an SSD drive but not willing to buy a new computer will be better off buying a standard SATA SSD and a cheap SATA controller card.
    Reply
  • nebun
    thanks bu no thanks
    Reply