whats the difference between SATA hard drives and EDIE hard drives? ?

Well to begin with I looked up your gateway system, from what I saw it uses PATA/EIDE drives. So you might want to be sure to get one of those. Now then to answer your question...

PATA stands for Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment or Parallel ATA. Now since I know you have a puzzled look on your face, let me further explain. The parallel part describes how data travels over the cables. You can have more than one drive per cable. The ATA bit is describing the connector.

EIDE stands for Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics or Enhanced IDE. It's name has a lot of geeky gobbledy **** in it that tells us techs about the drive connection type.

SATA stands for Serial ATA (you already know what the ATA part means from above right? Only one drive per cable on one of these.

They both come in laptop and desktop varieties.

Now HERE'S THE PART THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU...

The easy way to tell the difference.

PATA/EIDE/IDE drives have a data connector that is a long (most of the time gray) cable that is very thin but also quite wide. It looks like it's many wires laying side by said, and in fact it is. The drive itself will have 40 pins on it and the connectors themselves are long rectangles. The power connector on these is a (usually white) rectangle with 4 female connectors in it, which fit onto 4 pins on the actual drive.

SATA drives connect with an equally long (usually red) data cable with one (usually black) connector on each end, the cable is quite narrow but a bit thicker than a PATA/EIDE cable. The connectors on the cable are rectangular have 8 contacts(, usually a metal clip,) and fit onto an L shape connector on the drive. The power connector on the other hand is (usually black) almost twice as wide as the data connector, 15 contacts, and has the same L type design (to keep you from connecting it upside down)

The SATA drives are the newer technology and have all but replaced PATA/EIDE, they are quicker at transferring data, and are even hot swappable IN MOST CASES, however as a tech I always recommend any system you are working on be OFF and UNPLUGGED, while doing ANY and ALL work on the inside. Also make sure you are grounded to avoid any static electricity discharge while working on your system. To ground yourself and stay grounded you have 2 choices. 1 a wrist strap connected to a good ground... *sigh* OR 2 make sure you're not working over carpet, and rub your hands on the case a good few seconds before removing the cover and touching any circuits.

Yes you can get a hard drive anywhere that sells them, (e.g. BESTBUY, Officemax, etc.) and use it in your system as long as you get the right kind.

Here are some links.

Your gateway's guts

http://support.gateway.com/s/CASES/3501445/3501445...

All About PATA/EIDE - visual picture references of connectors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Advanced_Tec...

All about SATA - visual picture references of connectors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

*EDIT* You know I decided to take a closer look at that picture... it looks like it has a SATA power connector loose in there, if it does have both a SATA power connector and a SATA data connector on the motherboard, and you have the option to use either go with the SATA drive, you may or may not notice faster data transfers, but it WILL transfer data faster.

SATA cables are newer type of hard cabling. They transfer data serially using only few cables (not sure about the exact number) that's why it is thinner cable which allow more air flow inside the computer case. On the other hand, the EDIE or IDE cable is the wide 40 pin cable ( you can't miss it) it transfers data in parallel order; however, not very fast. Also the SATA cable is usually colored blue. Look at the back of the HDD if it has 40 male pins then you know it is EDIE otherwise it is SATA, hope this helped

No such thing as an EDIE hard drive. You mean E-IDE - Enhanced IDE.

The difference is pretty major... they use physically different connectors and there are very different numbers of wires in them. SATA interface has very few wires and the cable is under 1cm (1/2 inch) across and the data travels in series down a pair of wires. E-IDE has a cable 2 inches (5 cm) across with about 40 wires in and a big black two-row plug. Data travels in parallel (down 16 wires)... so you can't plug a SATA drive into an EIDE cable or vica versa.

EIDE cables are wider than floppy disk cables... they're the same type fo wiring that goes to most CD and DVD drives.

Some computers have the wide EIDE cable rolled up into a sausage about 1/2 inch across... makes them easier to route around the case.

You have to match the drive type to what your computer will support... or if your computer supports both then you could get either.

In simple terms speed. IDE transfer speeds are in MB a sec and SATA in GB a sec. Also the power and data connectors are different.

Open up your PC.....have a look at your hard disk........is there 2 thin cables coming out?(1 power supply cable + SATA) or does it have just one thin wire atteched and a wide flat cable connected to it?(IDE or"EDIE" as you called it lol)...........once you know what drive you have already,just buy the same one online!Of course you can buy a bigger one if you like!

Just rememeber.....wide flat cable = eIDE

Thin cable = SATA

Connection type and speed mostly.