What is the difference between IDE and SATA hard drives?

Answer by  Anonymous

All that is true about SATA and IDE but one thing is being left out here. As we all know most older manufactured products are stronger and long lasting. Therefore IDE is stronger and more lasting then SATA. SATA easily crashes (gets spoiled) and needs extra care.

Answer by  filippetkovsky (30)

IDE uses 40 or 80 connectors, which means it is wider. SATA uses only 7 connectors and is about 4 times smaller in width. Also SATA is said to have smaller data access time since it spins faster than IDE. However, IDE is cheaper and often the difference is negligible.

Answer by  NotQuiteNerdy (16)

Ignoring the supposed speed benefits of SATA and technical stuff the only difference to consumers is the different connectors. Newer motherboards usually only support SATA while older models use IDE.

Answer by  eric05 (42)

SATA hard drives have a smaller connector cable than IDE. Most SATA drives also have a different power connector than IDE drives. IDE drives use large flat cables and a 4-pin power connector. SATA and SATA-II drives have a higher bandwidth--1. 5 Gbits/sec or 3 Gbits/sec.

Answer by  Illi (61)

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is an older way of connecting storage devices to the system bus (usually on the motherboard of a PC). More recently developed SATA bus offers a more efficient (in both materials and speed) connection of storage devices to the computer. Most modern motherboards for desktop PCs support both IDE and SATA connections.

Answer by  NIB (42)

IDE or SATA is the type of data cable connector the hard drive has. IDE is an older, bigger and slower type of connector. Most modern hard drives use SATA.

Answer by  demonicmaniac (41)

IDE is an older standard, now superceded by SATA. IDE has a maximum transfer rate of 133 Megabytes per second while the latest SATA 3.0 has 600 MB/s. Additionally, SATA offers enhancements such as native command queuing and hotplugging not available via the older IDE interface.

Answer by  hotrodmagoo (54)

The difference between the two is the type of connection they have that connects them to the motherboard. One has a larger, older, connection cable with a bulky input. The newer version has a smaller, more streamlined cord with smaller, easier to use input. You should find out what kind of connection your pc has before replacing.

Answer by  pedro55 (76)

Very easy, the IDE uses an older connection standard which is bigger than SATA, slower and cannot achieve the same transfer times than SATA can. The SATA also allows the usage of the RAID zero system.

Answer by  Jessie124 (1885)

Some people say SATA hard drives are faster, but if they are it's almost indiscernable to the average computer user. However SATA drives do user a newer technology and are supported on newer computers (computers less than a year old). IDE hard drives tend to get hotter, too. The airflow is much better with a SATA.

Answer by  sairamesh100yahoocoin (223)

IDE and sata hard disks differs from the pin type only, ide hard disk contains 32 pins but sata hard disk contain only single pin through three or four connections. sata is very user friendly. sata hard disk pin are very small so use sata hard disks. both are same pin only differ.