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I'm planning to assemble my PC.. but want to re-use a little from the old one. I just want to know if it will hamper the performance. I have two 250GB IDE hard drives.

Will it drastically affect the performance if I try and use IDE to SATA convertors for the Hard Drives? And are there new motherboards that still provide more than one IDE ports?

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    You should preferably ask one question at a time, as this will get you more precise answers and the question will be more useful for a greater audience.
    – slhck
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:23
  • ok thanks..but I also want to ask the other questions
    – Pavitar
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:28
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    Sure, just ask them separately. As for the PSU power needed, there are some calculators online already: extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
    – slhck
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:30
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    this really helped!
    – Pavitar
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:37

3 Answers 3

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Marc is slightly incorrect... IDE although an 'old' interface and technology isn't exactly 'slow'.

Some motherboards still have an IDE interface aswell as all the SATA ones, I know i specifically picked one when building my last PC (went for the Asus P5Q) as i had a couple of 500gig PATA drives with data still on.

Performance, it would depend on what you're using the system for, if you where planning on using the 2 IDE drives for storage or where meaning for your OS?

Any gaming/large app's - then steer away from IDE/PATA for your OS.

Just general Office and Web work - you really wouldn't see a huge performance hit.

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  • I'm a programmer so my work would be more on apps like visual studio,virtual machines ...etc.I just wanted to know if its a good idea,if its not I will just use them for storage and buy a small storage capacity drive which will be sufficient for just the OS, is that ok?
    – Pavitar
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:42
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    Yes that would be the ideal solution - the only 'bottleneck' would be copying data from IDE to SATA... The data would pass between the 2 controllers as opposed to 1, the actual data transfer speed would still be several hundred MB per min (at least!) :)
    – HaydnWVN
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:46
  • Side note: I've got 1x 'half-SSD' (Seagate Momentus) for my OS, 3x standard SATA drives for data, and 1x IDE drive of old data in my system at home.
    – HaydnWVN
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:49
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    +1: I agree here. The other two answers are a little out of touch. 1) Your work doesn't sound like it is like it is i/o bound. 2) Having a Sata to IDE converter doesn't affect other SATA drives.
    – surfasb
    Nov 1, 2011 at 13:53
  • How is "If you're used to IDE performance, you'll probably be fine" out of touch. I even recommended getting a riser card for IDE to it continues to work if he migrates to another box. Nov 1, 2011 at 14:17
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Will it drastically affect the performance if I try and use IDE to
SATA convertors for the Hard Drives?

Define drastically. If you're used to IDE performance, you'll probably be fine. That being said, IDE is definitely substantially slower than SATA.

And are there new motherboards that still provide more than one IDE ports?

Do they exist? Sure. I would rather get an IDE PCI card though. Just think about the future, you know?

PCI-e is another option too. Just saying.

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  • um...comment as to why the minus one? Nov 1, 2011 at 14:13
  • I'll +1 for mention of a PCI IDE controller for future proofing, if you rename it PCI-e ;)
    – HaydnWVN
    Nov 1, 2011 at 16:38
  • added PCI-e as an option...but I really think PCI will outlast multiple IDE slots Nov 1, 2011 at 17:33
  • @aking1012 - i've installed 15+ new HP's the last month or so, none have PCI slots (only 3 PCI-e) yet all have 1 (unused) onboard IDE port... :)
    – HaydnWVN
    Nov 2, 2011 at 11:41
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    @HaydnWVN valid point. I was thinking from a system builder perspective as opposed to the buying vendor hardware. They tend to have a lot less in terms of expansion slots. Nov 2, 2011 at 13:57
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IDE is going away... It's an old technologie that can't keep up today... In my point of view...

Now for the IDE => SATA converter, I did not recommand it for an everyday use... It could be useful to backup data on an old harddrive, but if it's use on an everyday base for an internal harddrive on wich you'll put an OS, it'll definitely be a bottleneck for your computer... It's like putting a Honda Civic motor into a Ferrari, it just won't keep up...

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    Technically, IDE has been gone a long time (almost a decade). What we still call IDE is really ATA, but has the same physical interface. Modern PATA drives are still pretty fast and won't bottleneck for typical home usage (but might for higher than average IOPS needs for businesses).
    – MaQleod
    Nov 1, 2011 at 16:28

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