Whats the largest size IDE internal HDD available

eternaldark

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Just curious am looking at upgrading both HDD in the pc to avoid having another external HDD added to the pc.

is there also an easy to fit adaptor to convert the IDE to say SATA or EIDE

Thanks
 
Hi, don't know about an adapter, but I think Seagate do a 750gb IDE drive. And I've never heard of anything higher - if you want anything higher, then get two :thumbsup: .

Jez
 
you can get 750gig drives, but they aren't cheap, you can also get 500gig and 400gig. i was looking the other day, and i think savastore had a 400gig for £70 inc shipping, which was a very good price. i saw a 320gig SATA for about £52 delivered on the hotukdeals site

you can get connectors etc to change from IDE to SATA etc but they aren't very VFM. instead you might be better off getting a £15 SATA card, like a RAID card, you connect to a spare slot in your motherboard and it'll let you connect 1 or 2 SATA drives. you can always get a RAID card from the likes of svp that will let you connect another 4 IDE devices, you will probably need power connection splitters if you don't have enough (and of course a PSU that will handle it)
 
Just curious am looking at upgrading both HDD in the pc to avoid having another external HDD added to the pc.

is there also an easy to fit adaptor to convert the IDE to say SATA or EIDE

Thanks

I think the biggest they can go is 750gb on the ata architecture.

You can get adapters which will convert a sata drive to ide and also an ide drive to sata.
If you go from sata to ide then you can only use the ide speeds. If you have a sata drive but nowhere on the motherboard to plug the drive into you are best off getting a sata pci adapter. Then you can make use of the extra speed sata can supposedly achieve.

Have a look around on ebay, they are all dirt cheap. If you have a few drives id get one with a raid adpater built in.

I should add that there is little difference between ide and eide. You cant find an adpater from ide to eide like you asked.

All harddrives run off the ata interface. (Advanced Technology Attachment)
The old "ide" drives are run in parrallel and are PATA, the newer drives are run in serial and are SATA. The same interface but for optical drives is ATAPI.

IDE is simply a specification of ATA. EIDE is a newer specification of ATA which allowed drives to be able to hold more than 528mbs of data. Because the inteface is the same (PATA) the leads are the same so no adapter is required.

PIO was a way of transferring data from the CPU to drives.. DMA is a newer and faster way of transfer.

ATA has evolved over the years starting with ATA1 which used IDE and PIO 0-2 and DMA0 transfer. ATA2 was when EIDE came out which used PIO3-4 and DMA1. SMART was introduced with ATA3 (DMA2). ATA4 was when UltraDMA came out (UDMA33 or DMA3) and it ran at 33mb/s. ATA5 was UDMA66 or DMA4. This is also when they started to use 80 cables on the 40 pins, there was a staggered ground wire which allowed higher rates if transfer. ATA6 was UDMA100 or DMA5, ATA7 was UDMA133 or DMA6.
ATA7 was also up spec so that a serial connection could be used and along came SATA150. Later SATAII which runs at SATA300.

This is why you can get adapters in the first place.... its all ATA.


lol 4 people have answered in the time I typed this.... thats what I get for banging on. :)
 

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