Ide Vs. Sata2

Bannik · #1 (**permalink**) 23-05-08, 10:54 AM

Hi all.

I have this HDD, 80GB Maxtor IDE 7200rpm with 2MB cache, which, until yesterday I kept in a caddy USB2.0 external.

Yesterday, however I decided to move the drive inside my computer because it had become more convenient, so I took the IDE cable that came with my Motherboard and plugged it in, gave it power and booted up, everything went fine, Vista 64 installed the drivers for it and I am now using the drive as extra space for some games.

This morning I boot up and I swear I can notice a slight decrease in performance, maybe I'm just seeing things, but my other two HDD's are SATA2 and are really fast.

Is it possible that installing this IDE drive has slowed down my SATA2 drives even though they are on different connections? My understanding of North Bridge and South Bridge chips is very limited.

What do you guys think?

Thanks for reading.

kilroy67 · #2 (**permalink**) 23-05-08, 03:04 PM

I may be wrong, but isn't USB faster and more efficient then IDE?

Mr. Chris · #3 (**permalink**) 23-05-08, 04:48 PM

Are you saying that the SATA drives now seem slower since you put the IDE drive into the PC? Or that transferring data from the SATA drives to the IDE drive now seems slower?

As far as I understand, transferring data will slow to the speed of the slowest drive, so going direct (inside the same box) from SATA to IDE will be at the speed of the IDE drive. But, going from SATA to IDE thru the USB will be faster, because the USB enclosure has electronics built in that speeds up data transfer.

I don't think that simply connecting an IDE drive inside the PC would slow the SATA drives, but I can't say for sure because I don't have a PC with mixed drives. Chris.

kilroy67 · #4 (**permalink**) 23-05-08, 04:59 PM

Quote:

This morning I boot up and I swear I can notice a slight decrease in performance, maybe I'm just seeing things, but my other two HDD's are SATA2 and are really fast.

I think he is saying his 2 SATA drives are "really fast" while his former USB drive that he has now hooked up to IDE has decreased.

Bannik · #5 (**permalink**) 23-05-08, 06:08 PM

No, overall system speed seems to have dropped (to me) since installing the IDE drive, speed of transferring data, loading times have increased, as a USB drive believe it or not it was far more unstable, it might have been faster, but caused more errors, plus I had to switch it on and off when I needed it, where as now, when the computer is on, the drive is on and accessible.

My two SATA2 drives are 120GB each and it seems to go no where, but I had this 80GB external which I hardly used, mostly for storing crap, didn't want to install games onto it as an external because I thought it might cause problems.

Anyway, it's not as if I was planning to take the drive out, it's staying, the decrease in performance, if there really is one, is only slight.

Thanks for the input guys.

Mr. Chris · #6 (**permalink**) 24-05-08, 01:29 AM

If you want to see for sure, you can run Hard Drive Tach (HDTach) with the IDE drive attached then without the IDE drive, to make sure what the performance actuall is. Chris.

Midniteoyl · #7 (**permalink**) 25-05-08, 04:32 PM

With an IDE drive installed, you are adding extra 'wait states' into the queue, not to mention the extra time the HD takes to answer a query. This is very minor, but does effect performance. The older the drive, the worse it is.