External enclosure question

[ingeborgdot]

Why would someone buy a ide external case instead of a sata one? Wouldn't it be faster with a sata drive?

 

[Nodsu]

They want to use IDE devices? The majority of hard drives out there are still IDE and you can also connect IDE optical drives. And really, if you are buying an external hard drive, then speed is not one of your major concerns.

The drive interface speed has very little effect on real performance - the bottleneck is the drive mechanics, not the electronics. SATA drives are slightly faster in general simply because they are newer (and feature more sophisticated mechanics), not because they are SATA. A high end ATA drive (Raptor ) will beat the majority of SATA drives hands down.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Got ya. I never took that into consideration. I see clearly now. thanks.

 

[ingeborgdot]

But after really looking hard at ata drives the sata are actually cheaper. Why would I do that? I can use sata which won't be any slower and will be cheaper and then use it in my computer later if need be.

 

[Tmagic650]

You're not seeing much price differences I'm sure, so if you want SATA, go SATA. IDE enclosures will accept CD ROMS an CD/DVD Burners in bigger enclosures, so whats the problem? No big deal...

 

[Rick]

I* would buy an IDE enclosure, but what you buy and I buy are different as our needs our different.

I work on many computers and an IDE interface is very useful, because the majority of people out there STILL don't have SATA. That's my reason.

For you though, there's no reason to pick IDE; SATA would be better.

The only concern with SATA is the enclosures are a little less common than IDE enclosures, so you may not get the same selection. The majority of them are cheaply built though, so its a matter of choosing which one is least crappy.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Can you tell my why an ide drive would be more useful than sata?

 

[Tmagic650]

Can you tell my why an ide drive would be more useful than sata?

If a motherboard has SATA, I go SATA. If it has IDE only I could use a SATA PCI controller, if I wanted to. It's purely a personal choice. Most SATA motherboards have SATA and IDE. The IDE controller is for CDROMs and CD/DVD burners. You can also attach IDE hard drives to the IDE controller