Timothy Murphy wrote:
Can I run a SATA disk with an ATA controller? One of my disks is about to die, and I've been looking for a large - say 500GB or larger - disk, and all the ones I see seem to be SATA.
Serial ATA connectors are entirely different from what you have now. You can't (easily) use a SATA drive unless your mobo has the interface built in. An add-on card is possible, but extra expense for (probably) no better performance.
I suggest you look a little harder for an old-fashioned ATA drives, they're fairly easy to buy around these parts. I can get a 750 Gbyte ATA-6 from where I usually shop.
Alternatively, is it reasonably easy to find and install a SATA controller in place of an ATA one?