I'm totally unfamiliar with SATA. I've mostly only used SCSI, and rarely, IDE.
I've got a Dell purchased new in early 2003 which came with an IDE hard drive. It also has SATA ports, but per the manual, you can only use either IDE or SATA, not both. In any case, I'm having data throughout issues and want to get a faster hard drive. So I might as well go SATA since that seems to be the way to go these days. I found that there are drives with 1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s and 6.0Gb/s. I have to assume that the SATA interfaces in this machine are 1.5Gb/s. These drives are far more expensive than the other speeds. Can these other speed drives be used with this machine?
Also, cabling comes in several different versions. What the heck do I actually need to connect a hard drive?
I've got a Dell purchased new in early 2003 which came with an IDE hard drive. It also has SATA ports, but per the manual, you can only use either IDE or SATA, not both. In any case, I'm having data throughout issues and want to get a faster hard drive. So I might as well go SATA since that seems to be the way to go these days. I found that there are drives with 1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s and 6.0Gb/s. I have to assume that the SATA interfaces in this machine are 1.5Gb/s. These drives are far more expensive than the other speeds. Can these other speed drives be used with this machine?
Also, cabling comes in several different versions. What the heck do I actually need to connect a hard drive?