Hello Susan,

The computer should handle the SATA drive with a converter if you have no
other choice, but this begs the question, why not return the drive and get
the right kind (parallel ATA)? They certainly are not obsolete or anything
like that and should be just as readily available (if not more so) than the
SATA.

At 07:32 AM 9/6/2005, you wrote:
>Hi, my sons and I are trying to upgrade their computer. It will mainly
>be used for Internet access (mainly music downloads, email, and surfing)
>and games (the boys like Warcraft, Lord of the Rings; War of the Rings
>and Madden 2005, that type, space monger games!).  The computer had a 20
>GB hard drive that was always locking up and the whole system has been a
>problem since we purchased it used.  Finally it crashed big time.  We
>kept getting this message "Unmountable boot" or something very similar.
>Nothing would work, no starting in safe mode, nothing from disc or from
>CD.  We decided to replace the hard drive.  We have already purchased a
>new HD and discovered that the HD is SATA and the motherboard is set up
>for IDE.  We know that you can get an adapter for on the mother board,
>are looking at a Bytecc Parallel ATA to serial ATA converter.  Here is
>the question...is the motherboard "new" enough to support the new HD?
>Here are the specs: The computer is a Gateway 500S PRB original purchase
>date of 2001 with an Intel Pentium 4 processor 1500MHz with 128 SDRAM.
>I am not sure how to find out the information about the motherboard,
>chipset, etc.  We have already added an XTASY Radeon 9200 graphics
>accelerator to improve games (last December, it works fine)  The new HD
>is a Western Digital Caviar SE Serial SATA Hard drive, 250GB (should be
>enough for all the games they want to play without having to uninstall
>one to play the other, as they were doing.) Is this adapter going to
>help get things connected, or do we need to look at another motherboard
>that is more up to date.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
>Since their computer has been down, they haven't been happy since I will
>not allow them to play on my desktop and my lap top is so old it doesn't
>have the HD space to install, let alone play any of their games.  Also,
>all three are connected to the internet by a wireless connection. Thank
>you, Susan Llewellyn

Russ Poffenberger
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