How to choose an extra hard drive for my MB

[jimflint1]

I really want to buy the best deal possible for an extra hard drive for my computer. My MB is an Asus A7V8X-X and right now, I have an 80 gig ultra-ATA Maxtor hard drive. There are several great deals on SATA drives, but I don't think my MB supports SATA--but could I add a PCI card with SATA connections and have it work that way? Or use some kind of adapter? What is my best option?

 

[Cybelex]

A second IDE is the easiest thing to do with that board. Your Maxtor is probably DMA6, so it is plenty fast.

But, yes, a card to add SATA (and more IDE drives) can be added easily and allow you to use SATA. I have an extra 500 GB SATA on an A7V8X just because the price was irresistable.

 

[jimflint1]

A second IDE is the easiest thing to do with that board. Your Maxtor is probably DMA6, so it is plenty fast.

But, yes, a card to add SATA (and more IDE drives) can be added easily and allow you to use SATA. I have an extra 500 GB SATA on an A7V8X just because the price was irresistable.

Does it work just fine?

 

[Cybelex]

Yes, the SATA drive and card worked well from the beginning and never were there any problems. The one thing that is sometimes annoying is that many bootable utilities, like partition managers and so on, do not have drivers for the card and don't see the SATA drive. But others work fine, like Acronis True Image.

 

[jimflint1]

Thanks a lot. In the mean time, I've borrowed an external drive--it's a Hitachi 160 usb drive that has a dc power connection on it. The drive came without a power cord, so I'm wondering what to use. on the outside of the drive it says: 5v 600mA, so I'm assuming that I'd need an adaptor with those settings, but am I correct in assuming so?