SATA vs. IDE - which do I have?
 

Is it possible to find out if my drives are IDE or SATA without opening the case? I'm running WinXP Pro if that makes a difference.

Right click on "My Computer" and select "manage". Then choose "Device Manager" under system tools. Expand "Disk Drives" in the tree. There should be devices with model numbers, which MIGHT included "SATA" or "IDE" in the model number, but might not. Easiest thing to do is just google the model number and see what the results say the drive is.

Thank you very much. I'm off to figure it out!

If your system is fairly new (like, last 5 years), odds are high that it's SATA.

Is ATA the same as SATA?

No. Both IDE and SATA drives are ATA.

What's the model #?

It's a Maxtor 6L300R0

That's an IDE drive.

Note:

Many PC's have both ATA and SATA connections. So you might be able to upgrade to a new SATA drive if that is your goal.

If you want to crack it open, SATA connections look something like these blue ones, ATA more like the yellow:

I'm actually getting a new computer and want to transfer data from the old drive.

I used a Tornado for that. Hooked it up to the old PC and into the laptop. Spiffy and wonderful. BtD recommended it. Worked like a charm for me.

That looks pretty cool actually. The external exclosure will also work for accessing random drives we have that aren't in PC's. (this is for a business.) May have to pick up The Tornado too though.

Not to start a format war, but one cool feature that is built in to all Macs is Target Disk Mode. If you hold down the "T" key during startup, it doesn't load the OS, but instead runs the hard drive in computer as if it were an external drive that can be connected to a Mac or PC via a Firewire cable.

Assuming that the old computer is still functional, then getting files moved to the new machine shouldn't be that difficult regardless of format. Just put both computers on the same network and set up filesharing.