Until I found a hard drive with one attached...

IDE to SATA Converter - Converts SATA Hard Drive to IDE



So, next time I need a hard drive, no need to go IDE, just get the SATA drive my (hopefully soon) new system will need....

whatever you do...do not buy from best buy!!!

Is there an inferior brand that we should know about?

inferior pricing!

That would almost have to slow down the maximum transfer speed of a SATA hard drive wouldnt it?

Granted, you will almost never come anywhere near the top transfer rate, but still it might slow it down some.

using HDTach which throws some tests at your HD, I achieved I think it was right around 130 out of 150 megabits? the exact measurement escapes me. So I was still a ways off.

But the fastest IDE standard is 133 last I knew, so you would think that would bottleneck a SATA hard drive.

But nevertheless a cool gizmo, and much cheaper than buying a new motherboard or hard drive.

I just happened to find one of them (made by western digital) in a non-operational Network HD I ripped apart. Looked at the card, and says to myself "hmmmm, I wonder....." Plugeed the drive and card into a USB HD case I have, with an internal IDE connection, fired it up, and was abel to browse the drive. Sooooo..... even though I know it'll slow the effective speed of the HD itself to IDE specs, I now have a 500 gig hard drive I can install in my system.

Just figured alerting folks to this tip might help someone who, like me, is debating a new system in the near future. I still upgrade my current system occasionally, and now I know I can buy HDs for the new system, and use them in the current system... (makes sense to me anyways)

And I buy nothing computer related from Best Buy if I can help it. I have a MicroCenter, and several CompUSAs locally.