Which is more compatible with my IDE Hard Disk?

Which is more compatible with my IDE Hard Disk?

The USB cable interface will limit your bandwidth to the limits of the USB ports. This means if you will be using a USB 2.0 interface, you'll have a very limited bandwidth which is about 60MB/s (theoretical, this is reduced in real life applications). Comparing that to IDE speed of about 133MB/s that too low. If you're using the IDE to SATA adapter wherein the interface is a separate circuit board, you can reach speed closer to the actual IDE rated speeds. With that said, it is better if you use the IDE to SATA adapter instead of one that goes through a USB interface.

Which is more compatible with my IDE Hard Disk?

If you want to use a SATA hard drive but can’t decide which one to use whether to use the internal hard drive or use the external hard drive which uses the USB interface. There are motherboards that support both SATA interfaces and USB 2.0 ports. By theory, a standard USB 2.0 port can transfer data at a very high 480 Mbps.

While the first generation SATA interface can support up to 1.5 Gbps. There is a big difference in terms of transfer rate. The newer USB 3.0 standard can transfer at a maximum rate of 5 Gbps which is more than ten times faster as the maximum USB 2.0.

Even if you install a USB 3.0 adapter on your motherboard to allow support for USB 3.0 devices, it is still not possible to meet the actual maximum rate of the USB 3.0 standard because the speed will still depend on the maximum bus speed of the motherboard which is originally for USB 2.0 standard.

That means, even if you install a USB 3.0 adapter on your motherboard but it originally supports USB 2.0 standard, you will not be able to meet the maximum transfer speed of the USB 3.0 standard and will just fall on the maximum transfer rate designed for USB 2.0. So, to have the best performance, it is still better to use the internal SATA interface.