HDD Enclosure

[ArkiStan]

I'm looking at some external HDD enclosures and in the specs it says that the "internal interface is IDE." Does this mean I need to buy an IDE HDD? Can I use it with a SATA drive?

[brainsmile]

I believe so

[DarkFury]

If the internal interface is IDE, then pretty much that is the only kind of drive you can use with it.

IDE and SATA are not cross compatible.

[ArkiStan]

Are SATA drives any faster that IDE drives when it comes to transfer rates? Or is it simply a compatibility issue?

In other words, if I put an IDE drive inside an HDD enclosure, which connects to the computer via USB 2.0, would I ever be able to notice what type of HDD is inside if I never opened the enclosure?

[DarkFury]

Are SATA drives any faster that IDE drives when it comes to transfer rates? Or is it simply a compatibility issue?

In other words, if I put an IDE drive inside an HDD enclosure, which connects to the computer via USB 2.0, would I ever be able to notice what type of HDD is inside if I never opened the enclosure?
Well honestly, your system can only go as fast as its weakest link.

USB 2.0 goes 480 Mbps
SATA Hard drives go 150 Mbps
IDE Hard drives go either 133 Mbps or 100 Mbps (depending whether it is ATA 133 or ATA 100 drive)

That being said, the speed of the hard drive can't saturate the bandwith provided by USB 2.0... so that isn't your bottleneck. The speed of the drive is. The drive will still only transfer data as fast as it is physically able, therefore the SATA drive should still be faster in an enclosure using USB 2.0 (by that logic)

Hope that helps ya some...

[zero2dash]

Keep in mind (also) - you will pay slightly more for a SATA drive itself, and the enclosure will also probably cost a little more.

Recently at my job, we bought one of these enclosures.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A-USBIDE-35-P1&cat=CAS
$14.99, USB 2.0 - works with both Mac and PC (although most of them will, almost none of them specifically tell you so).

There are also Firewire cases out there, and combo cases (Firewire + USB) - shop for what you need, basically. :thumb:

Depending upon how much you'll use the case and for what - you may be better off spending the extra money for SATA...but that's your call. We use our case at my job as backup only (for 2 PCs and 1 Mac) and using IDE with USB 2.0 works well enough.

[ArkiStan]

Yeah, the drive will only be for storage purposes, so I think IDE+USB 2.0 will be good enough. Thanks for everybody's input!