SATA vs IDE?

[gf4200isdabest]

Hey, my current hard drive is about to die so that has unexpectedly put me in the market for a new one.

I see all sorts of info on newegg about SATA, PATA interfaces. I guess I'm just outdated in that the last time I bought hard drives everything was just IDE. The motherboard I currently have is a

MSI K8N Neo4-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130491

Does that mean I can use SATA, PATA, or IDE hard drives? What the heck is a controller card and would I need it assuming I had no interest in any sort of RAID array? Is there any reason for me to be even looking at this stuff or would I be better off buying an IDE drive?

This computer doubles as a gaming rig and an "always on" workstation (probably ~600-700 online hours a month). What sorts of things should I consider? I'm really out of the loop on this stuff, it would seem.

 

[SoMBrA]

This picture will help you
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-130-491-08.jpg

As you can see you can use IDE/PATA or SATA HDD's. You dont need a "special" controller.
I would recommend you the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA, they have new writing system (perpendicular) and they are very fast

 

[j00fek]

best upgrade from ide to sata would be this. i have 3 of these in my server and they are reliable, and cant beat that 5yr warranty.

be sure tyo check you motherboard book for using sata as the primary drive for your operating system. you might have to tweak the bios in some areas.

 

[corkyg]

Agree with J00fek's choice. That's a very reliable drive. For the sake of technical nitpicking - remember that SATA and PATA are BOTH IDE drives. (That simply means they have Integrated Drive Electronics. It is just that they have different interfaces - one serial (SATA) and the other parallel. Cheers!