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.