How to move from IDE to SATA?

[Froglips]

I have an Asus An8-SLI Deluxe. I installed the OS and assorted software to
a 200gb IDE drive. I find that the board doesn't seem to like having a DVD
R/W drive on the secondary slot with the HDD. Anyway, it seems like I
should switch to SATA drives and use the IDE drives just to run the optical
drives. I would really rather not reload everything. Can I mirror or
backup the IDE drive to the SATA drive then just make the SATA the boot
drive? Software required?

Also, I found the fan on the northbridge chipset insanely noisy so I removed
it and put on a passive HS (Coolermaster Northbridge Chipset Cooler PRC-P01)
which is 37.5 x 37.5 x 32. I have read several messages that indicate that
I needed to swap in a fan. The system seems stable but I do not have a way
to measure the temps on the northbridge. System sure is quiet with no
northbridge fan and a Zalman HSF.

Froggie

 

[Mercury]

First step, I would install the new HDD on the sata controller with the sata
controller set to the mode you intend on using (IE RAID or NON RAID - your
choice) then install the drivers required if any into the existing OS. If it
is XP this will save you a repair install to load drivers should they be
needed.

Then.. everest or ghost etc. Make sure you preserve partition order and
drive letters when you copy the disc otherwise if system is not C currently
this will stuff up your drive letters.

HTH.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Froglips:

The system seems stable but I do not have a way
to measure the temps on the northbridge.

I have a different board, but am using something called "Everest - Home
Edition".

It's freebie from http://www.lavalys.com/ and tells me the temp at motherboard,
CPU and my system drive.

 

[milleron]

I have an Asus An8-SLI Deluxe. I installed the OS and assorted software to
a 200gb IDE drive. I find that the board doesn't seem to like having a DVD
R/W drive on the secondary slot with the HDD. Anyway, it seems like I
should switch to SATA drives and use the IDE drives just to run the optical
drives. I would really rather not reload everything. Can I mirror or
backup the IDE drive to the SATA drive then just make the SATA the boot
drive? Software required?

You need to install the SATA drive and then run software to clone the
IDE drive to the SATA before changing the boot order.
Commercial software like Norton Ghost and Acronis TrueImage will
handle this task very nicely in just a few minutes. They're certainly
not freeware -- $50-60 MSRP -- BUT they're WELL WORTH having for
hands-off backups. The latest versions of both schedule and do daily
incremental image backups in the background, so you never have to
think about it. Should disaster strike, you're always completely
backed up. That's why I think one of these should definitely be your
first choice, especially since you'll have that nice big 200GB drive
for holding your backup images.
This shareware http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html is $27 and
might do what you want.
This freeware, HDClone, http://www.miray.de/download/sat.hdclone.html
says it cannot handle SCSI drives, so it might have problems with a
disk connected to the A8N-SLI's SATA controller. It doesn't have a
"smart-sector-copy" feature, either, so it copies every sector, used
or free. It therefore works only when cloning to a new drive that's
larger than the original. You'd have nothing to lose by trying it.

Other readers will know of other freeware programs, but IMHO, there's
no substitute for either Ghost or TrueImage.

What doesn't your A8N-SLI like about having an optical and hard drive
on the same IDE channel?

Also, I found the fan on the northbridge chipset insanely noisy so I removed
it and put on a passive HS (Coolermaster Northbridge Chipset Cooler PRC-P01)
which is 37.5 x 37.5 x 32. I have read several messages that indicate that
I needed to swap in a fan. The system seems stable but I do not have a way
to measure the temps on the northbridge. System sure is quiet with no
northbridge fan and a Zalman HSF.

Froggie

Ron