Hey ppl,
first of all i really love this forum,Although i do not understand some topics,i’ve really learnt a lot here.Anyways just my thoughts.One of my friends does not have a SATA port in his mobo,And he plans to buy a SATA HDD and use a SATA to IDE converter.He thinks that since SATA is fast,So it will increase the speed of the read/write functions.I personally feel that since he’s gonna convert it to IDE,the speed will be brought down to the IDE’s speed.Correct me if i’m wrong.
Regards
Well as long as the hard drive is 7200rpm, it doesn’t matter whether its SATA or IDE. He’ll get the same speeds. Interface is irrelavant as a hard drive can’t choke even a 100MB/s EIDE interface :P.
Thats exactly what i thought,Thanks for clarifying it.So he’ll end up paying more for nothing right?
Correct. Tell him to get a pata hdd. Those converters aren’t much reliable, and might even kill the hdd 
It may be advantageous to go for SATA from future perspective.
I am sure your friend has older system and he might need new system later. Advantage in going with SATA drive will be that it will be straight usable on future motherboards while IDE may not be supported later.
The SATA interface is known to give 3-10% better throughput vs a PATA HDD of the same model. This is due to some interface optimizations.
But you are right with your observation. Older HDDs were made SATA my manufacturers using similar means though internally.
Don’t think SATA or PATA makes much of a difference especially with older boards. SATA implementations on older boards(esp socket 754) may be a little problematic. Better to get a PATA drive also than to rely on some in between hardware to cause complications. On the other hand, if your friend is planning to upgrade soon and keep the HDD, it makes sense to do the above.