Solved Different Types Of Hard Drive

[momanium]

I am really confused as to the different types of hard drive:

*I have several chunky old hard drives which I believe are 3.5 inch and I thought were SATA. They have a 4 pin wire for power and a wider ribbon cable for data. These are quite old and heavy.

*I have a much newer Dell computer which has a small and thin blue data cable and a wider power cable. These are on my Dell Desktop and I have been told these are SATA.

I am not sure what the difference is because I though they were both SATA, Any help!

 

[DeaconFrost]

Can you be more specific?

Are you asking about interfaces, such as SCSI, IDE, SATA, etc?

Or are you referring to solid state SSD, hard drives HDD, and hybrids?

 

[momanium]

Hi,

Yeah sorry I hit the enter button. I am talking about interfaces as edited. The question for SSD etc will be for later.

 

[windude99]

I am really confused as to the different types of hard drive:

*I have several chunky old hard drives which I believe are 3.5 inch and I thought were SATA. They have a 4 pin wire for power and a wider ribbon cable for data. These are quite old and heavy.

*I have a much newer Dell computer which has a small and thin blue data cable and a wider power cable. These are on my Dell Desktop and I have been told these are SATA.

I am not sure what the difference is because I though they were both SATA, Any help!

The old hard drives are IDE which is an older and not currently used in new computers. The newer Dell uses a newer technology called SATA and that is what's in most new computers.

 

[momanium]

I am really confused as to the different types of hard drive:

*I have several chunky old hard drives which I believe are 3.5 inch and I thought were SATA. They have a 4 pin wire for power and a wider ribbon cable for data. These are quite old and heavy.

*I have a much newer Dell computer which has a small and thin blue data cable and a wider power cable. These are on my Dell Desktop and I have been told these are SATA.

I am not sure what the difference is because I though they were both SATA, Any help!

The old hard drives are IDE which is an older and not currently used in new computers. The newer Dell uses a newer technology called SATA and that is what's in most new computers.

I had a feeling this was the case but on one of the older drives which is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 it says ATA/133 HD

 

[windude99]

You were feeling correctly. If this thread is solved, be sure to mark it as solved. If this thread isn't solved, then feel free to ask more questions. We are here to help

 

[DeaconFrost]

Older IDE connections are thick ribbon cables with plastic plugs on them. The drives would have the 40-pin male end, while the cables had the pin holes, female, 40 pin connector. Those ports could take two drives, a master and a slave, per port. SATA is one drive per port, and has the potential for much greater speeds. You don't really see those speed advantages until you use a hybrid drive, or more importantly, an SSD.

Another nice benefit of the SATA technology is that the cables are thinner, blocking less airflow and can be rerouted and hidden better.