SATA With ATA Secondary Drives - How to Jumper?

[Ken Hall]

I'm considering buying my first SATA drive. If I have an older ATA as
a second hard drive, how do I jumper it. If I jumper it as a slave
and I have yet another ATA on the same IDE port (3 hard drives in all)
do I jumper both ATAs as slaves?

Ken

 

[J. Clarke]

I'm considering buying my first SATA drive. If I have an older ATA as
a second hard drive, how do I jumper it. If I jumper it as a slave
and I have yet another ATA on the same IDE port (3 hard drives in all)
do I jumper both ATAs as slaves?

You can't have three drives of any kind on one IDE port. An SATA drive will
have its own single port and single cable and has no effect whatsoever on
the cabling or jumpering of any parallel ATA drives that might be in the
system.

 

[greiner]

That's the beauty of SATA, no jumpers to mess with. You only have one
drive, one cable. For your ATA drives, one has to be master, one has
to be slave.

 

[Ken Hall]

An SATA drive will
have its own single port and single cable and has no effect whatsoever on
the cabling or jumpering of any parallel ATA drives that might be in the
system.

Then how does the system know which is the main drive -- which is the
boot drive? How does it know whether I want the master/primary on
IDE port 1 or the SATA to be the boot drive?

Ken

 

[J. Clarke]

Then how does the system know which is the main drive -- which is the
boot drive? How does it know whether I want the master/primary on
IDE port 1 or the SATA to be the boot drive?

You go into setup and specify which device to boot from. The details will
vary depending on your brand and model of machine but that's the broad
outline.

 

[Ken Hall]

You go into setup and specify which device to boot from.

Got it. Thanks.

Ken

 

[Curious George]

master/slave or primary/secondary channel positions never indicate the
boot drive. You can always boot to any ATA drive regardless of its
position.

You go into setup and specify which device to boot from. The details will
vary depending on your brand and model of machine but that's the broad
outline.

Also the partition you want to boot (on a particular drive) has to be
visible, primary & active.

In addition you can boot an OS from a different device than indicated
in BIOS using special software (after briefly booting from the BIOS
specified device of course).

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

master/slave or primary/secondary channel positions never indicate the
boot drive.

But they do define what the enumerating sequence will be
and how the preferred sequence will be influenced by that.

You can always boot to any ATA drive regardless of its position.

It's not that black and white.
The bootsequence option will have to support your "any" possible combination.
It it is not supported you will have to reposition the drives or exclude
one/some from BIOS inclusion or deactivate bootsectors until the preferred
sequence matches that of your choice.

 

[Irwin]

Also the partition you want to boot (on a particular drive) has to be

visible, primary & active.

The above is apparently not true either. I know that you can boot linux
from logical drives, and I have recently researched several websites
that say you can boot windows from logical partitions. I did not know
that, and have not tried it to confirm, but they sound like they know
what they are talking about.

IMF

 

[J. Clarke]

The above is apparently not true either. I know that you can boot linux
from logical drives, and I have recently researched several websites
that say you can boot windows from logical partitions. I did not know
that, and have not tried it to confirm, but they sound like they know
what they are talking about.

In all such cases the machine actually boots some program from a visible,
primary, and active partition that then loads the OS, possibly from another
partition.

 

[Curious George]

The above is apparently not true either. I know that you can boot linux
from logical drives, and I have recently researched several websites
that say you can boot windows from logical partitions. I did not know
that, and have not tried it to confirm, but they sound like they know
what they are talking about.

IMF

I guess I'm becoming an old fart. As I recall there was a time this
was not the case (or maybe I was led to believe it was not the case
when I was toying with Linux and multiboot like mid-'90s. (I never
thought of trying to install to anything other than pri parts before
that.) I've never revisited the issue because it only really applies
to the most extreme multiboot scenarios of which I see no value or
from great sloppiness in partitioning while resisting using modern
partitioning tools which is equally silly.


IIRC with regard to booting to partitions the waters are a little
muddy. Sometimes the boot loader is located in the MBR of Drive 0 and
sometimes requires use of a primary partition. So running an OS in an
extended parition of disk 3, for example, doesn't necessarily mean the
BIOS didn't direct a boot to something else first.

I'm glad you brought this up. It might just be curious enough now to
brush up on some of these proceures/tools. (Oh, who am I kidding. I
just adore computers w' dedicated roles & virtual machines & other
virtualizing software).

 

[Curious George]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 01:06:06 +0100, "Folkert Rienstra"

But they do define what the enumerating sequence will be
and how the preferred sequence will be influenced by that.

Not with modern boards & BIOS's as boot order is so adjustable. It's
also typically a non-issue on ancient boards if there is a properly
installed boot manager or only 1 OS/active partition.

It's not that black and white.
The bootsequence option will have to support your "any" possible combination.

booting from any position is possible but if you have more than one
bootable device or partition you have to expect to give the computer
specific instruction on dealing with that - they aren't psychic.

reentering the BIOS setup to select a different primary device or
device order to correct a misconfiguration is not a *prohibition* to
booting to a disk other than primary/master.

It it is not supported you will have to reposition the drives

more like change the boot device order in BIOS or upgrade to a board
from at least the late '90's if you can't, or use a boot manager
either on a HDD, floppy, cd, etc. or change the master/slave selection
with an external switch...

repositioning drives is just clumsy & unnecessary unless you are
concerned with cosmetics & convention.

or exclude one/some from BIOS
inclusion or deactivate bootsectors until the preferred
sequence matches that of your choice.

conflicts with other installed OS's or boot managers or bootable
devices or mistakenly making partitions you don't want to boot from
active are all very different ideas than the standard ability to boot
to a HDD in positions other than primary/master. These conflicts you
mention are due to misconfiguration. Describing a troubleshooting
process to correct a misconfiguration doesn't change that or indict
the feature.


BBS BIOS's & BIOS's with BBS-like features allow you to manipulate the
preferred order allowing a great deal of flexibility & control over
the boot order allowing you to easily boot any compatible device the
BIOS recognizes. But even ancient machines should also allow booting
to at least ATA drives 0-3 as well as some mass storage cards. It
goes without saying that you have to expect to have to be careful when
adding many bootable devices & partitions to the same machine.

I have yet to see a mobo that could not boot from drive positions 1-3.
If you use boards which can't perform this basic, standard function
let us know what makes/models so we can avoid such odd-ball crap.