How to install SATA hard disk drive when your motherboard does not have SATA port

SATA hard disk is cheaper and has high data transfer rate compared to IDE hard disk drives. All recent motherboard has integrated SATA port whereas some older motherboards do not have SATA port.

Usually there are two types of SATA hard disk drives depending on manufacturers.

Some hard disk manufacturers do not provide power slot in the hard disk where you need SATA power cable for power supply for hard disk drive as shown in the image.

 In the first image above label 1 is for connecting SATA data cable and label 2 is for connecting SATA power cable.

In the above image power slot is readily available in the hard disk drive along with SATA power slot and a port for connecting SATA data cable, so there is no need of extra SATA power cable. You can directly plug any one power connector  which comes from SMPS to hard disk power slot.

 If you want to fix SATA hard disk drive to the motherboard which does not have SATA port you have to purchase IDE  to SATA/SATA to IDE dual convert adapter or USB to SATA/IDE cable.

IDE  to SATA/SATA to IDE dual convert adapter as shown in the image is a card which has to be fixed to the IDE slot of the motherboard. IDE slot is where you fix the IDE hard disk drive with 40 pin IDE data cable. This card does not need any drivers to be installed.

The USB to SATA/IDE cable has one SATA and one IDE port which has to be connected to USB port of the computer. When SATA or IDE hard disk connected with this cable it acts as a removable disk.