[Cialug] SATA the norm these days?

[Colin Burnett]

I'm currently facing an issue of an older system (Athlon XP 2400+
2GHz) which needs a storage upgrade but has no SATA on the mobo (nor
PCIe).  I could buy PATA drives or some cheap PCI <--> SATA card & get
SATA drives or get a new system.

Going with PATA means this round of drives will be relegated to older
harder (not forward compatible).
Going with PCI <--> SATA means I'm spending an additional >$40 for the
card which is worthless in new hardware, but it means the drives are
forward compatible.
Going with a new system means I've got Yet Another Obsoleted Machine
(TM) which runs perfectly fine for what it does.

I expect PATA & PCI to be an increasingly scarce thing on mobos of the
future, so I really don't want to go option #1 or #2 but would prefer
#2 over #1.  #3 just plain sucks, again, because the machine is
perfectly fine for all reasons except storage size.  However, a new
CPU + mobo + memory can be had for (last spec'ed maybe a month ago)
under $130 for non-bleeding-edge hardware, which means $40 is a
significant chunk.

Any perspectives on this decision from anyone?  :)


Colin

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just read the statement:
>
> "Most modern desktop systems ship with storage devices (hard disk and
> CD/DVD drives) on a Serial ATA bus, rather than the older IDE (ribbon
> cable) bus type."
>
> in a kernel config document on gentoo.org.  Is this true?  I know I
> just bought a motherboard and it had SATA on it, but I thought it was
> being all edgy and stuff.  Is SATA really the norm these days?
>
> -todd