HARD DRIVES!!! need help!

**DonVitoJr** · 09-06-08, 04:19 PM

Well its your choice not mine, im just here to help.

**kamakazi7640** · 09-06-08, 09:52 PM

haha

much appreciated
but its settled ima get the one you suggested

**~~Cecil900~~** · 09-06-08, 09:56 PM

Here's how you tell if its SATA or IDE

Pop the side off your case, look at it. If it uses this connector that is only about an inch or less long, its SATA. If its like 4 inches its IDE. Also IDE hard drives use 4 Pin power connectors, sata doesnt. SATA doesnt have pins either, another way to tell.

IDE on the left, SATA on the right(in that pic)

SATA Hard Drive:

IDE Hard Drive:

See the difference?

**kamakazi7640** · 09-06-08, 09:59 PM

mines the wider one..i guess im ide? =\ good thing i didnt order.

**Viktor_Olin** · 09-06-08, 10:00 PM

I believe that this is your motherboard:

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERB...5553sp26.shtml

If so, and if I'm reading the specs correctly, it should support both IDE and SATA drives.

BUT, if I were you, I'd do exactly what Cecil suggested and get the same type of drive (assuming there's a free connector).

**~~Cecil900~~** · 09-07-08, 09:43 AM

Well one thing you can do with IDE is set one as the master drive, and one as the slave drive. Two hard drives going down one cable. but you have to have the jumpers right.

But it also says that you have a secondary IDE port, which is most likely being used by your CD/DVD drive so that isn't an option

I'm not really knowledgeable on IDE, but if your problem is storage space i would try to use both drives. But if you cant get them both to work then just use the higher capacity one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136111

**Mojo** · 09-07-08, 10:39 AM

According to Gateways site, three HDDs were offered for that machine from factory, all were IDE100 speeds.
Unless you find great deal on another IDE (or PATA) drive, I would move up to the SATA, just for the increase in transfer speed.
It didn't specify which SATA version that Mobo supported, so assume SATA not SATAll .

PATA IDE100 100MB/s
PATA IDE133 133MB/s
SATA 150MB/s
SATAll 300MB/s

Using two IDE devices on same cable is fine for DVD/CD drives where usually you are accessing only one device at a time, but there is a possibility of "cross-talk" between devices on same ribbon cable, and this could happen between HDDs on same port, which have a greater chance of accessing both drives at same time. Not common, but possible.
Where SATA HDDs have their own port assigned to that drive, eliminating the IDE BUS channeling the DATA.

**~~Cecil900~~** · 09-07-08, 01:10 PM

Also IDE cables murder Airflow. Especially when you have 2 or more, which you probably do because of your CD/DVD drive.

SATA is just all around better.