Daft question, which i should know?

[stuart1044]

Hi all,

I should know the answer to this question, but thought id check, as im tired (excuses, excuses )

I currently have my HDD set up on IDE cables instead of SATA, because at the time i forgot to pick up some SATA leads, and had IDE in the house.  I want to change to SATA and was wondering can i just swap them over, by which i mean, unplug the IDE and then just put the SATA on?

[NickN]

Your hard drives are either IDE or SATA. They do not come both ways unless I missed something somewhere in new technology.



Your hard drives do not have any SATA plugs on them to use. You must buy new drives and make sure you order the SATA type.



There is no such thing as a (daft) dumb question, only (daft) dumb answers.

You could never use SATA cables on your drives to begin with if you were able to plug IDE cables into them. IDE cables are large, SATA are tiny. You can see the difference in the plugs here:

IDE (better known as ATA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Attachment

SATA (serial ATA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA