Guide: How to install a new Hard Drive

[fov]

hehe thats cool cheers.

[cobra]

Hi,
you mention that older power connectors can be connected to SATA drives with an adaptor. You seem to skirt around the data connection issue. If a PC only has the IDE connector, can you still link up to a new SATA drive?
Thanks

[2o2o]

You can but you will need a PCI to sata cardor a PCI-e to sata card(although if you have PCI-e slots you have sata), I have seen a few adapters for connecting an SATA drive to an IDE header but these are usually same sort of price as the cards and of course lose speed in the conversion as there is no direct way to convert the signals the connections work completely differently.

[fov]

Yeah, you can buy cards to give you a sata port.
Something like this: http://bit.ly/a5q8ty
will do the job.

[Seán O'Nilbud]

Also Id not really say "If you've bought your PC since 2003 it's going to use the data connection called SATA" as IDE was still common way after that and many cheaper end stuff like dell would only use an IDE interface even up till a couple of years ago.

That's not in any way accurate. Name a single machine made in 2009 which used IDE to the exclusion of SATA.
Accurate information trumps speculation every time.