Migrating from IDE to SATA

Whenever I buy a new computer the main problem has always been migrating the contents of one hard disk to the other.  In most instances, this is pretty straight-forward.  Even with advances in technology, there’s always some sort of backward compatibility to fall back on to do the job.

For instance, migrating to SATA from IDE (also called parallel-ATA or PATA) could be done on the hardware side because in all probability, the new motherboard still has an IDE port.  With that, it’s a matter of disconnecting the IDE hard disk from the old PC and connecting it as a separate physical drive in the new computer.  (Of course, that assumes that all things are equal, like the operating system, file ownership, logins, etc.)

This gets a bit complicated though when the data transfer is from new technology to old technology.  For instance, transferring data from a SATA drive to an IDE drive, without any SATA port on the computer. It’s a bit complicated but not insurmountable.

There are several options.  The first option is to buy a SATA controller daughter card.  The other option is to get a SATA drive casing with a USB connector.

The first option is straight-forward as well.  Just open up the computer; plug in the SATA controller daughter card; connect the SATA hard disk to the daughter card and power supply; and you’re off and running.  Of course, on Windows, you would have to detect the daughter card first and you might need to fiddle around a bit with the BIOS settings in order for the computer to read the SATA hard disk.  But all in all, this option will have a the SATA hard disk as a separate drive which is readable by Windows and data transfer is a matter of copying files and folders from one hard disk to another.

To me, the second option is a lot better.  It gives the option to have an external USB drive with a SATA hard disk inside.  Again, this is fairly straight-forward.  Insert the SATA hard disk into the external USB SATA drive enclosure, making sure you connect the power supply and the SATA data cable.  After properly closing the external drive, and connect this to a USB port on the target computer.  The external drive should be instantly detectable and mounted on the computer.  Again, transferring data is just a matter of copying files from one drive to the other.

The above solutions come at almost the same price.  There’s practically no difference between the cost of a SATA daughter card and an external USB drive enclosure for a SATA hard disk.  Unless of course the SATA daughter card also happens to be a RAID controller card, which is a lot more expensive.

Admittedly, the above recipe sounds easy on paper.  For the most part it is, though I am partial to the elegance of the external USB SATA drive as a solution.  Unless of course, there’s money to spend on a RAID card, and an extra SATA drive or two or three to play with.