Hello, I recently purchased a new hard drive as my old one is broken. I now have a "Maxtor DiamondMax 22 - hard drive - 500 GB - SATA-300". If you need to know more information i got the product here: Maxtor 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - OEM - Ebuyer The main problem with this, is that the wires i was using from my old hard drive do not properly replace themselves for this one. One of the wires (that attatches to the CD drive) is the wire that fits, although it is slightly different to the one i used before, however I think this is irrelevant. I have one socket being used at the moment, the one from the CD drive and there are two left. One is a smaller version of the one that is being used (looks like a long necked L), and the other is a small male socket with 8 small pointy things inside. I would like to know if there is a certain cable or adapter I will need for this, unfortunately I do not know what motherboard I am using, however I think the equivelant cable that was being used with my previous hard drive was the (in my case white) wide and flat cable, approx 1.5 inches in width. I am sorry for my lack of technical knowlage, if you would like to know anything else please just ask. Thanks
it sound like youve just bought a HDD (hard disc drive) but in fact you have bought a SATA HDD & your previous HDD was IDE, the image below shows an IDE cable on the left and a similar SATA cable you have your choices, buy a SATAII HDD controller (a plugin PCI card) like this (although that card can only do 150 kb/s) return the HDD for an IDE HDD, obviously remembering that WinXP cant recognize over 137GB without Slipstreaming (copying the XP CD with the SATA drivers) the SATA drivers into a blank CDr (legal) , if wish any further help, just ask Edit: SATA to IDE converters / adapters did non used to be very reliable although that may have changed
Ok thanks Donkey, My first option would be to return the HD, however it is opened and out of its box etc, although no damage has been done and I have had it less than a week, I dont know if they would take it back. Is it worth trying to send it back? I would also be willing to buy a SATA Controller if that is what is required to make this work. I have looked at the example product but i cannot see where this would plug in or how it would work. Also, I do not reconisethe cable on the right hand side, does this plug from a CD drive to the HD? I can't make out the cable but it does look like it would fit my HD. Thanks again. Oh, what does 150kb/s on a HD mean, I take it thats bad but what would you recomend for a good long term purchase?
well SATA & IDE devices work differently SATA devices use (like IDE) 2 connectors, a power (4 pin) cable a data cable (8 pin, but only 7 are used, pin 8 is just to make sure you connect it the right way around) they differ by the type of connection they require SATA = Serial ATA PATA = Parallel ATA (sometimes referred to as IDE so, that means that you can only put 1 SATA device per cable & IDE / PATA can have upto 2 devices per cable. my mistake, i meant 150MB/s (a data transfer speed of upto 150 Megabytes per second) SATA2 can actually transfer data at 300MB/s (and it is a sustained transfer rate unlike SATA1 HDD & controllers which are burst rate transfers) as well as a SATA 1 or 2 controller (the only real difference between SATA1 & SATA2 is the data transfer rate you may also need a new PSU (power supply unit) unless you can find some reliable power adaptors, for the sake of a phone call, i´d say ring them & ask if you can send the HDD back & exchange it for another IDE HDD, you never know unless you ask please ask if you need help understanding anything[ot]BTW: i´ve never even seen a SATA HDD & certainly never used 1[ot]
