Hi,
Im in the process of upgrading my PC, i last upgraded almost 2 years ago, when I did this I bought a SATA drive but had a nightmare with the leads, not sure if they were just cheap, but they would not stay in the mobo, just kept falling out, so anyway exchanged the drive for an IDE one, also upgraded my dads pc last year and had the same problem, so is this a common problem with SATA cables? if so i'll just stick with my IDE/133 drive.
Cheers

Can I know more about this word meaning? Did you screw up your SATA hard disk on the case frame?

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Falling out, as in, the SATA cable that goes from the drive into the Mobo, the cable was ok at the drive side, but plugging it into the Mobo, it would not stay in the mobo, you know the IDE ones, once in there an effing nightmare to get out. anyway, nothing wrong with the drive, just returned it and got an IDE. maybe they are just cheap cables that come with the mobo.

I've never heard of SATA cables just falling out. Considering the really low price of even the best quality molex brand SATA cables, it doesn't seem particularly smart to use this as a pivotal factor in the decision of whether or not to use SATA hardware.

As I said, I've never encountered this in my fairly wide experience with motherboards, including really cheap ones. If you're using the same SATA cables you had problems with the first time, maybe there's your problem.

Did you plug your SATA cable into IDE connector on mother board? This sounds silly but I really have no idea why the cable will fall out once you plug it in.

You meant you changed the cable to IDE cable and going well now. However I have no idea how you plug a IDE cable into your SATA hard disk?? Did you use a converter?

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The user did not just change the cable, he changed the hardware as well

O...ok, I miss that part. Anyway, really out of idea about falling out of hard disk cable...

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What I might do is get another drive(SATA) but say an 100GB and use it for the OS and use my IDE drive for Data, I guess this is'nt a problem is it? and if I have the same problem with the SATA drive then again just send it back and at least ive got my IDE for back up.

On the note that I just wrote, if i bought a new SATA hard drive and installed windows on it could I use my existing hard drive as a 2nd drive without formatting it and losing all the data that is on there, bearing in mind that is got XP loaded on it, i doubt it will but it would be great if i could keep all the data on there rather than burn all my photos/doc etc to DVD.

Well looking at most Mobo's ASUS P5B at P5W, it looks like they dont take IDE, so will now invest in a SATA drive, so my question now, what is a a good HDD to get for up to £70 and upto 250GB? not sure if the 200Gb Seagate Barracuda 10SATA2 is any good, im not sure what the 3GB interface means, supposed to be a new thing, also what about the buffering, its seems there are 2mb, 8mb and 16mb, but what does this do? guess best to go for 16mb if poss.

AFAIK the P5B takes IDE drives

Your right but I bought a SATA Maxtor and no probs this time, also with the P5B mobo, see rate my system for full spec.