upgrade HDD currently ATA/IDE, SATA ok?

[beencounting]

my pc is about 5 years old with a HDD that is almost full. I want to get a secondary drive where I can store HDTV (mostly UT football) and process it, then burn to Blu Ray ( have to get a Blu Ray burner too).

how to know if my MOBO can take a Sata? Or can I just go with another ATA-IDE ? I'm guessing SATA is faster so it would be beneficial towards huge HDTV files which can be 25-50GB.

I don't know much about this topic, so any advice is appreciated.

 

[14tokihorn]

Your MoBo must have a 'SATA controller'.
If you can Google the model number, or have some reference to its' specs, it'll be fairly prominent.

Example - SEE LINK: (note the verbage "- 4 x SATA II RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5)" @ the 1st MoBo in the listing... disregard the references to "RAID 1, RAID 0+1" ... etc.

The Link

 

[wherzwaldo]

Rather than finding out and researching your motherboard, it might be easier to just open up the computer and look for any ports that look like the blue ones below:

If you don't have any, you can add a SATA controller into one of the expansion slots.

Depending on the SATA drive you get, it may also require a SATA power connector, which your power supply may not have. There are adapters that convert Molex -> SATA, though.