DMA to Sata Converter
An Ultra DMA-to-SATA converter allows you to connect a Serial ATA hard drive to a motherboard that has IDE drive connectors and only supports the older Ultra DMA transfer mode. While an Ultra DMA-to-SATA converter allows you to use a hard drive that otherwise would not work in your computer, it will not allow the computer to use all of the features available in computers with native SATA support.
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Connecting
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Before connecting an Ultra DMA-to-SATA converter to a hard drive, check the hard drive's label for a guide illustrating the drive's possible jumper positions. If two of the pins have a label such as "Legacy IDE Mode," place a jumper shunt over those pins. You can then connect an Ultra DMA-to-SATA converter by placing it over the L-shaped SATA connector on the back of the drive and connect an IDE cable to the pins on the back of the converter.
Adapter Performance
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Connecting a SATA drive to an Ultra DMA-to-SATA converter causes no detectable drop in performance. In 2003, computer website AnandTech ran the 2003 Winstone Content Creation benchmark test on a Seagate Barracuda ATA V hard drive with and without an adapter. With an adapter, the benchmark score dropped by less than 1 percent.
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Interface Performance
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The SATA Revision 3.0 specification supports a maximum possible transfer rate of 750MB per second over a SATA interface. However, the IDE interface supports a maximum speed of just 133MB per second. Connecting a SATA drive to an IDE interface lowers its maximum possible performance. In the case of desktop hard drives, the performance degradation is generally minimal; the fastest desktop hard drives can achieve transfer rates over 133MB per second only occasionally. However, the performance degradation becomes more severe if you connect two hard drives to the same IDE controller, because the 133MB speed limitation applies to both drives.
Native Command Queuing
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When you connect a SATA hard drive to an IDE interface, you lose access to the features available only with SATA interfaces. Of these, the one that most greatly enhances performance is Native Command Queuing. When a hard drive needs to retrieve data from multiple locations across the rotating platter, NCQ allows the hard drive to execute those commands in the order that requires the fewest platter rotations.
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