quick question

[cooper15]

how will i beable to run an sata hard drive on an sata compatible motherboard with 2 ide drives? will i need to get an sata controller?

and if so what one would be good(i would need a cheap one, maybe $25 limit)

[David]

If your board has an integrated SATA controller you plug the SATA drive into the small plugs on the board for SATA. If your board does not have a controller you need to purchase an appropriate PCI card with the SATA controller on it.

[cooper15]

well its going to be a DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail $123, so it does have integrated sats. but my next question is how exactly would you connect an sata hard drive with ide drives? if its any different then just plug in the ribbon.

[dark_15]

A SATA drive uses a different cable from a PATA drive. You would connect the SATA drive directly to a SATA port (the cable will come with your motherboard) and then connect your PATA drive with a PATA cabble (the one that looks like a ribbon).

Hope that helps! :)

[David]

well its going to be a DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail $123, so it does have integrated sats. but my next question is how exactly would you connect an sata hard drive with ide drives? if its any different then just plug in the ribbon.

IDE drives use a ribbon cable and a molex connector, for data and power respectively.

SATA drives use an SATA cable and an SATA power cable. They are different. Some drives can use a molex for power instead though.