an ATA drive [the S in SATA does not stand for Seagate]?? I guess that it is possible that the drive has both types of connections, just never have seen one.
The signal connector for a SATA drive is a small 7 pin cable [not a ribbon].
Unless I am totally discombulated the Ultra ATA 100 is the ribbon cable, the key difference from the older ribbon cables is that it has 80 conductors [still 40 pin connector]. There are 40 extra ground wires to provide less noise on the signls and less crosstalk between adjacent signal wires.
I just finished building a new computer with the following parts: 450W pwr. sup, P4 2.8GB CPU, ATIB VT7 v2.0 mobo, Seagate ATA/IDE 200 GB hrd drv, GeForce 3 vid crd, WinXP, SP2. When I plugged everything in I automatically used the standard ribbon cable for the hard drive (not the SATA cable) and plugged it into IDE1 as a master. I have partitioned my HD, installed XP and transferred all my files from the old hard drive, via CD.
I am now reading/educating myself about the benefits about using the new Serial ATA cable and I see on the Seagate box that they recommend using the Ultra ATA/100 interface.
My question is now that all my files have been loaded and the HD partitioned using the old IDE/"ribbon" cable can I now make a change and disconnect that interface and change to the new Serial ATA interface without loosing any files or whatever? Will I have to make any change in the BIOS settings? Thanks for any help. Carl2125

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