# IDE vs. PATA vs. SATA
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 14, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384 "2008-03-14T18:53:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/1 "2008-03-14T18:53:01Z")
I’m trying to figure out if I can put the hard drive from my [iMac G5](http://apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=imac_g5&performa=off&sort=date&order=ASC) into [this](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146602&Tpk=PHR100ac) enclosure. The enclosure says it’s compatible with “ATA drives.” Does that include Serial ATA? Oh, and a big shout-out to the inventors of the hard drive protocols for making this as confusing as possible, and to the copywriters for the specs for making it as unclear as possible. Great help.
---
### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/2 "2008-03-14T18:59:17Z")
Won’t work.
If it doesn’t say SATA, it won’t support SATA.
ATA is not SATA.
---
### Author:  [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/3 "2008-03-14T19:01:47Z")
Serial ATA (SATA) and parallel ATA (IDE or ATA) are not physically compatible. The spec page for your G5 says it uses a SATA hard drive (standard these days). Newegg does have plenty of SATA drive enclosures though and they are not expensive.
---
### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/4 "2008-03-14T19:26:47Z")
Thanks. One last quick follow-up: My wife has an old iBook I’d like to salvage the drive from. The tech specs say it has an ATA-66 drive. Can I put that in [this](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146604&Tpk=phr250cc) 2.5" enclosure?
---
### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/5 "2008-03-14T19:29:22Z")
Heh… Mac users.
---
### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/6 "2008-03-14T19:29:55Z")
What’s a MATA?
---
### Author:  [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/7 "2008-03-14T19:34:45Z")
Dare I ask why bother to keep old drives? New ones are faster cheaper and bigger… I’d say you can get a cheap hundred-gig drive with USB or Firewire pretty dirt cheap these days, possibly on par with the drive enclosure itself if you shopped around a bit.
---
### Author:  [@Uncommon\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncommon_Sense)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/8 "2008-03-14T19:35:03Z")
What’s a MATA?
Nothing, why?
---
### Author:  [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/9 "2008-03-14T19:37:41Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
Thanks. One last quick follow-up: My wife has an old iBook I’d like to salvage the drive from. The tech specs say it has an ATA-66 drive. Can I put that in [this](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146604&Tpk=phr250cc) 2.5" enclosure?
[/QUOTE]
Assuming it’s indeed a 2.5" drive, it looks like it should work. An IDE controller should be able to deal with an ATA-66 drive.
I’ll leave it up to you to answer why you want to, with how cheap a new comparitively giant-sized drive is.
---
### Author:  [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/10 "2008-03-14T19:39:50Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
Thanks. One last quick follow-up: My wife has an old iBook I’d like to salvage the drive from. The tech specs say it has an ATA-66 drive. Can I put that in [this](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146604&Tpk=phr250cc) 2.5" enclosure?
[/QUOTE]
Probably - that’s the smaller form ATA/IDE interface used with 2.5" laptop hard drives. The one possible “gotcha” is the drive height - with a 2.5" enclosure the IDE interface is generally fixed (as in soldered down to the circuit board) so if you have a 12.5mm tall drive (laptop drives come in a couple of heights, 9mm and 12.5mm) it might not be possible to plug it into the drive enclosure. Pop the drive out of the laptop and measure it, if you have any concerns I’d really recommend going to your local independent computer store to buy a drive enclosure. They’re really cheap, I usually get them for under $20 on sale.
Oh, one other thing - I have never worked on an iBook but all the Win PC laptops I’ve taken apart have had the hard drive fastened into a little “drive cage” - it’s just a bit of thin plastic and metal screwed to the hard drive so that it will slide into whatever slot the laptop case has, but you may need a set of tiny phillips and/or torx screwdrivers to remove the teeny screws they use. An inexpensive set of jeweler’s screwdrivers is a couple bucks at any hardware store and you can find small torx screwdrivers or 1/4" bits in the tool aisle.
---
### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/11 "2008-03-14T20:26:44Z")
There’s some music files on there my wife would like to recover - stuff she bought through the iTunes Music Store. Otherwise, no, I wouldn’t bother recovering a 20 GB hard drive.
My iMac died - the video card appears to have failed, which means it needs a new logic board - and I’d rather spend $40 on an enclosure so I can salvage the hard drive and save up for a new computer.
---
### Author:  [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/12 "2008-03-14T20:40:33Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
There’s some music files on there my wife would like to recover - stuff she bought through the iTunes Music Store. Otherwise, no, I wouldn’t bother recovering a 20 GB hard drive.
My iMac died - the video card appears to have failed, which means it needs a new logic board - and I’d rather spend $40 on an enclosure so I can salvage the hard drive and save up for a new computer.
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough - in which case I would ebay both drives after you’ve grabbed what you want off them, but YMMV.
---
### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/13 "2008-03-14T20:42:55Z")
Are they seriously worth anything on eBay, especially considering they’ve both been used for years and are that much closer to failure?
---
### Author:  [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/14 "2008-03-14T20:43:53Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
There’s some music files on there my wife would like to recover - stuff she bought through the iTunes Music Store. Otherwise, no, I wouldn’t bother recovering a 20 GB hard drive.
My iMac died - the video card appears to have failed, which means it needs a new logic board - and I’d rather spend $40 on an enclosure so I can salvage the hard drive and save up for a new computer.
[/QUOTE]
If you don’t want to use the drive permanently in the enclosure but you just want to salvage the data off it you can get the same USB-ATA functionality in a “caseless” device; it’s basically a cable with USB and ATA on either end. A 2.5" hard drive runs on 5V which the USB bus supplies so you just pop the drive out of the laptop, plug the cable in, hook it to your other computer and copy the data off.
Here’s an example:
> **[Koutech IO-UIC120 USB2.0 to IDE Converter - Newegg.com](https://www.newegg.com/koutech-io-uic120-usb-to-ide/p/N82E16822999161)**
>
> Buy Koutech IO-UIC120 USB2.0 to IDE Converter with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
---
### Author:  [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/15 "2008-03-14T20:45:07Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
Are they seriously worth anything on eBay, especially considering they’ve both been used for years and are that much closer to failure?
[/QUOTE]
Who knows? Lotsa collectors and purists out there.
---
### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/16 "2008-03-14T21:09:29Z")
[QUOTE=SanibelMan]
Thanks. One last quick follow-up: My wife has an old iBook I’d like to salvage the drive from. The tech specs say it has an ATA-66 drive. Can I put that in [this](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817146604&Tpk=phr250cc) 2.5" enclosure?
[/QUOTE]
Have you ever opened an iBook?
There are about a hundred screws you need to remove to get access to the drive…
---
### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/17 "2008-03-14T21:26:14Z")
Well, the computer itself is trashed, so it doesn’t matter if I don’t get the computer back together again.
---
### Author:  [@Stan\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Doubt)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/18 "2008-03-14T22:29:15Z")
I second the idea of using a USB to SATA/IDE adapter. I got one that has 2.5"IDE, 3.5"IDE and SATA connectors for $12. If you need instructions on how to disassemble the iBook, look [here](http://www.ifixit.com/) . And if you do decide to sell them on ebay make sure you overwrite the data (not just delete it).
---
### Author:  [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2008, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ide-vs-pata-vs-sata/441384/19 "2008-03-17T14:48:47Z")
I just bought a couple of enclosures for $18 each (at my local independent computer store, of course).
One thing to note is that they both came with a second USB cable for extra power. Drives draw quite a bit, and one USB port may not deliver enough.