New SATA drive question.

I just purchased a new Maxtor drive for my WIN98SE 2Ghz system. I didn't notice 'til I got home that its one of these new SATA drives. (I'd never heard of that before.) Before I take it back, is there such a thing as an external, or PCI SATA controller? Would that be worth doing, or should I just try to exchange it for a proper IDE?

Thanks all.

Dex

You can get a SATA PCI controller card, and they're not expensive either.

It offers faster access times, but you'll need to buy a controller card, power cable if you don't have one from your current PSU, and a SATA cable to go from the drive to the PCI card.

I think it would be worth keeping it if you can pick up the card and cable(s) cheap enough.

Liam

Thanks for the quick reply Liam. I'll go hit some computer stores today and price some controllers. Are there any issues, that you know of, about trying to boot from a "card-controlled" hard drive? I'm hoping to use this to replace the "C" drive.

Thanks again.
Dex

btw - The drive came with the cable, and has the legacy power connector also. :)

I would keep the drive, also. You'll be glad in six years when you upgrade and bring your SATA drive with.

The controller card will need to be configured if you want to make the drive bootable, but it should come with instructions and not be too hard to configure.

Hey ProfessorU; Thats an interesting point. Just for the record, (and before I saw your post), I exchanged the SATA for an IDE. However, in order to help with the "about-to-die C: drive" problem I'm having, I'm thinking of going back and getting an external SATA drive. Which brings me to this question:

I was under the impression that 4 to 5 years was the life expectancy of a hard drive. Is that different now? Would I, realistically, expect to transfer a 6-year-old drive to a new computer?

Thanks;
Dex

You can put an old drive in a new computer. Newer IDE controllers are backward compatible. It may run slow, though.

As for life expectancy, there is no hard and fast rule -some won't last long at all and others will go on for years and years. But all new drives have either a 3-year or 5-year warranty, so it's reasonable to suppose that the vast majority will last at least as long as that.

I have seen some drives last under tough conditions for ten years (until they were gracefully retired) but that was less than 10% of them. I used to get about 3-4 years from my drives but lately I've been seeing more drives last longer. Someone should commission a study.