SATA hard drive question

I ordered a new hard drive from newegg and sent it to a friends house to put in my computer that had a hard drive failure.

I received an email tonight stating that the hard drive is a SATA and it won't work in my old computer.

Can someone explain what a SATA hard drive is?

Is the connection the wrong type?

Is it best to send the hard drive back and get one that isn't a SATA?

sata drives are faster than ide by a bit. is up to you, you might not want to waste money for an adaptor is you are sticking with ide hdd. if you dont want to bother sending it back u can go buy a pci sata adaptor.

Ya what he said :-).. the Power cable and the cable that connects to the motherboard are both different.

So I need 2 different PCI to SATA adapter cables.

1 for the mother board and another for the the power supply?

I briefly looked at new egg for an adapter but I didn't have any luck finding either cable yet in their search feature.

I will try asking at our local best buy computer store.

You could also get a SATA-->PATA adaptor but those are kinda flakey IMO



Although 90% of SATA drives dont have a problem with the standard molex power (and adaptors are cheap)



Wait till you get the drive. Odds are you'll only need the SATA controller cable as most SATA drive support standard power conectors.