Alan, However, most new motherboards have limited support for PATA - often only having one connector for that these days, as it is basically used just for the DVD drive. These boards tend to have at least 4 SATA ports, and often two are RAIDable. At some stage PATA drives will become more expensive and/or not available (especially in the larger sizes). So there *may* be an advantage in getting a SATA controller and a SATA drive if you want to extend the life of the server a little longer than you might otherwise - it would then also have the benefit of allowing you to move the SATA drive at some stage on to a newer server.
On my home systems, I install new SATA drives where I am able and divert the PATA drives to the older systems. Of course I don't want to imply that you wont be able to get PATA drives next week, but they will become deprecated over time, as does most computer technology :-) Martin On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Alan L Tyree <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 26 May 2008 11:54:35 +1000 > david <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 11:44 +1000, Martin Visser wrote: >> > PATA is basically the same as what you might have known as ATA or >> > IDE >> > - with the wide 40 pin ribbon cable and header connector. (Yes you >> > can get round IDE cables but that is mainly aesthetics and airflow >> > - the connector is the same. >> > >> > SATA is the new-fangled type of connector with a skinny flat cable >> > with only a dozen or so pins. (Google will give you pics and specs). >> > >> > If your board is 4 years old, it almost certainly will be IDE (or >> > PATA as you say) >> > >> >> I have a PATA only board to which I added a SATA controller card and >> now run two PATA and two SATA drives. Works for me :) >> >> I'm not sure if there could be a BIOS issue, but I didn't have one. > > Thanks David. I don't really have a storage problem: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ df -h > Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on > /dev/hda2 37G 3.0G 32G 9% / > tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /lib/init/rw > udev 10M 52K 10M 1% /dev > tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /dev/shm > /dev/hda1 145G 9.5G 130G 7% /home > > > But I like the second disk for automatic backups. More than two would > be overkill :-). > > Thanks > >> >> >> >> > On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Alan L Tyree >> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > > I need some advice. I'm running Debian Etch on a four year old >> > > box. I has (had) two disk drives, one of which dropped dead. >> > > >> > > Looking for new ones, I see P/ATA and S/ATA. Can I use either one >> > > of these, or do they require special motherboard support? How do >> > > I tell if my system supports either one? >> > > >> > > Thanks for help, >> > > Alan >> > > >> > > -- >> > > Alan L Tyree http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan >> > > Tel: 04 2748 6206 Fax: +61 2 4782 7092 >> > > FWD: 615662 >> > > -- >> > > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - >> > > http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: >> > > http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html >> > > >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Regards, Martin >> > >> > Martin Visser >> >> -- >> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ >> Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html >> > > > -- > Alan L Tyree http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan > Tel: 04 2748 6206 Fax: +61 2 4782 7092 > FWD: 615662 > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -- Regards, Martin Martin Visser -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
