SATA and PATA devices in same desktop tower
 

Hello,

My IBM IntelliStation M Pro desktop tower has IDE hardware: CD burner and CD player. My computer (which is ~ 6 years old I think) has an unused SATA power plug end and an unused SATA data transfer port so I thought I'd buy a SATA DVD burner/CD burner combo to replace the PATA CD burner. But I read the following line at Wikipedia and wonder exactly what it means:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

"Backward and forward compatibility- SATA and PATA

At the device level, SATA and PATA (Parallel AT Attachment) devices remain completely incompatible—they cannot be interconnected......"

What does that 'interconnected' really mean? Can I have my 2 IDE hard drives and my IDE CD player play nicely with a SATA DVD burner/CD combo burner?

[My OS is MEPIS 8.5]

Thanks

Short answer - yes, you should have no problems. I have a pata optical drive, two sata optical drives and three sata hard drives on one box with no problems. I think the article was referring to the obvious fact that you can't connect a sata drive to a pata ide ribbon cable or a pata drive to a sata connector when it talks about the inability of the sata and pata devices to be interconnected.

SATA just use a different connection than PATA or IDE. The commands are the same, but the interfacing is different. You need an adapter to convert serial into parallel. Make sure you can get an adapter that is compatible with optical drives. It is better just pick an IDE optical drive, so there is no confusion and do have to pay more for the adapter.

The OP has a free SATA-port on his mainboard, so no use for an adapter here.


@SP7: Should be no problem, just make sure that your SATA-controller is activated in the BIOS.

All that wiki is saying is you can't put a sata on an ide channel nor can you put an IDE on a sata directly.

PATA is the 2007+ name for IDE and friends. Same old tech, new name. SATA is a completely different connection type, it shouldn't be an issue to use. That being said, mixing and matching could throw some drive order recognition stuff off with your distro and require some boot loader and friends coaxing afterwards. My system seems a bit quirky if I boot with a blank media in my SATA optical drive. And various distros call the various drives different /dev/ designations. Even though it's all the same hardware.

Shouldn't be an issue if you use UUIDs.

What SATA controller do you have ? See 'lspci'.

What does that 'interconnected' really mean?

Think of it like putting a 12VDC lamp on a 120VAC wire. You know that is wrong and won't work. An IDE cable is a type of voltage and signal and a sata is a different voltage and signal. They are interchangeable nor able to interconnect directly.

Your computer works fine because the sata is on it's own controller and the pata is on it's own controller but the controllers may be connected together in the backplane.