I have a spare EIDE 650GB drive that is 7200 RPM and is currently in an external case via usb 2.0.

I know when I dump large things to and from it it takes a long time, I have burned music and dvd files from it in the past and it seems to work but moving chunks of data to and from seems to take a while via usb 2.0 vs moving from my 2 internal sata drives.

I RARELY use this external drive as an "on the go storage unit" so I was considering just putting it into my case via EIDE cable on the motherboard.

2 questions,

If I do this what will be the actual speed difference maybe in numbers I could understand?
Maybe to move 100 gig of stuff what speed/time wise would be the difference?

Second, will it effect the already hooked up sata hard drives I am currently running (slowing them down or anything?).

Thanks for any help on this,

Bill

Been googling a bit on this and seems usb 2.0 has a transfer rate of upto 480 gb/per second
and EIDE has a transfer rate of 11 to 16MB/per second.

Is that info correct? If so, am I understanding this right that 480GB would be aprox half of one MB so if I stuck that drive into my pc via EIDE vs currently via USB 2.0 then my transfer speed would increase by about 20 times the current speeds?

If so I am doing that as long as hooking that drive into the motherboard via the EIDE cord won't effect or slow down my current 2 SATA drives in anyway.

Bill

It will not affect your SATA drives.



I don't know about the transfer rate. Google doesn't help much here.

I see the USB 2.0 rate as 480mbs and although I see the 16mbs for IDE an IDE 133 should be 133mbs.

Appears that these rates are not relevant to each other or I just don't understand their significance.

I would think the internal would be faster but not nearly 20 times. I'd say not even 2 times.

Here is a page describing transfer rates in a bit more detail:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...terface-c.html



If you want a really fast external drive these SATA externals are really good:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4153

They are SATA 2.5" laptop drives in a neat little case. 160GB and up slips into your pocket!

Here is a hard drive 'tach' if you want to try it out:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

The free version only measures reading not writing.

I installed the tach thingy on this current setup but it wouldnt run do to it being a vista based os, will for sure install it on that new antec 900 build i am 99% done with and will be my primary eventually.

Bill