Switch IDE hard drive to SATA

 mike1144

With the Optiplex GX270, there is no advantage to using a SATA hard drive, instead of an IDE drive, but if you wish to install a SATA hard drive, because the motherboard has a SATA connector, all you need is a SATA data cable and maybe a Molex 4-pin to SATA power adaptor.

Bev.

SATA does have an advantage ove IDE. SATA had a faster data transfer over IDE.  IDE transfers data from the speeds of 5MB/sec up to 133MB/Sec (ATA100/133). SATA however data transfer speeds range from 150MB/sec to SATA II which doubles it to 300MB/sec.

Also, there is a air flow advantage for using SATA.  The cable is much smaller than the IDE ribbon cable.  Since the cable is smaller, it will help keep the system cooler as it does not restrict as much air flow as the IDE ribbon cable.

Since the original question was asking if it would be advantageous to replace and IDE drive with a SATA in a GX270, the user is most likely a normal home user that doesn't require sustained data throughput that high end servers use and will most like be able to take advantage of the burst data transfer rates that SATA has over IDE.

On another note, since IDE drives are becoming more of a legacy device these days, it would make more sense to upgrade with SATA as well.  I'm finding that IDE drives are actually becoming more expensive than their equivilant SATA capacity drives as vendors are charging more for the legacy devices.

 tannerjt

While i agree with you about the air flow inside the case, but regards to the drives, the Interface may be 100/133/150/300 MBPS capable, but no single 7200rpm hard drive can deliver more than about 66 MBPS sustained, no matter what the interface is. 

Even the fastest SATA drives [10,000rpm WDC Raptors]  can only deliver about 70 MBPS maximum.

Bev