Those who follow my activities closely (I'm sure most of you do) will know I've recently upgraded an Intel D845GRG based PC for my Mum, but now it's experiencing hard disk issues. It's always had IDE hard disks but the manual for the board also says it supports ATA drives. Does this mean I can use a SATA drive in it? If so, how do I go about it 'cos there isn't a SATA socket on the board so far as I can tell. Are there IDE to SATA converters that would do the job or would I need to install a SATA card? If it can use SATA drives does the board limit the max capacity of the drive or could I go for a terabyte drive? The board manual is here - http://downloadmirror.intel.com/15328/eng/D845GRG_D845GBV_ProductGuide_English.pdf Thanks very much.
So an IDE to SATA adapter wouldn't work - how is that identified? Seems to be quite an array of SATA controller cards but not much at the cheaper end. Mmmm. Thanks for posting.
Thanks Landy. Preferably the drive would be bootable via the card. I've found one for £5.49 but you can't boot from a SATA using it. Problem therefore is not knowing how to tell which cards will enable booting and which cards won't. The PC runs XP so would a terabyte drive need partitioning before installation (or can you do it after installation)? It's the age old question of how far should I go trying to get newer tech running on an old system before saving myself the grief and just getting a newer system. The simplest solution would be to just buy a new IDE drive, but that's not particularly sensible long-term I'm guessing.
A SATA card can be bootable depending on how it's designed. Usually, it needs it's own BIOS but if it can look like a 'legacy IDE' controller (which is not usually advertised) then the mainboard's BIOS should be able to use it too. But there is another solution, from the UK site or from the US site. I picked up something similar from another company at a Microcenter (small US computer/electronics chain) a while back but I don't know where I have it stashed right now, it's has to be right next to the Startech one I have. They do work, the one I linked to plugs into your board and provides 2 SATA channels that correspond to the primary and secondary IDE drives on an IDE chain. But I never tested it for speed.
