HD upgrade. Is SATA in an ATA machine possible?

I have a HP ZD7260US and have really been wanting to upgrade the hard drive.

I currently have a Hitachi 7K100 100GB ATA drive (7200 RPM). It runs really well, but I want more on-board space and not a dual HD modification.

I really want to use the new Hitachi 7K200 drive but it's currently only available in SATA.

Is there a mod or adapter that will make a SATA 2.5" drive work in ATA 2.5" laptops? These days, it seems almost anything is possible.

Also, I see a lot of new 2.5" drives are being released up to 500GB. Is ATA dead in laptops or will some of the new crop of big hard drives support older ATA hard drive machines?

Thanks.

 

There is an adapter, but there are 2 problems:

1) you have to make sure that the adapter will fit in the hard drive bay. If it's a snug fit in there, the extra adapter might not fit.

2) you will still be bottle necked by the transfer rates of the ide connection. So you won't get the extra speed that sata drive offers. If this is purely for a space requirement, then you should get an external drive. But if you're actually hoping to see a speed improvement also, then you won't get it.

 

Can you advise where the adapter is available? I have some space available and don't mind modifying the drive bay either. I need to check out the space requirement first.

I don't totally agree with you on the interface bottleneck, but I know what you mean. An ATA-6 interface is good for 100MB/sec. The 7K200 benchmarks show a maximum sustained transfer rate of about 65MB/sec and 30 to 40MB/sec during write/seek operations. Additional interface overhead would certainly help cache transfer and some operations, but 2.5" hard drives just are not as fast as the ATA interface yet. Look at this link for more info:

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

I do currently have external drives, which is the way to go for speed and capacity, but Im looking for more internal space for a field project.

Thanks!