ASUS P4P800-X m/b rev1.00 - Boot drive priority question

[Chmeee]

Mother board:
ASUS P4P800-X m/b rev1.00 BIOS v08.00.09 (date: 2004-08-16)

Installed drives:
200 Gb Western Digital SATA connected to SATA1
320 Gb Western Digital SATA connected to SATA2
120 Gb Western Digital IDE to primary IDE (PRI_IDE)
DVD-RW & CD-R connected to seconadty IDE (SEC_IDE)

Problem:
I frequently change IDE drives connected to PRI_IDE to
service customer drives. Each time a change is made to drives
on the IDE cable, the BIOS reverts to the IDE device for #1 boot
priority. This occurs on either the PRI_IDE or SEC_IDE cable.

Question:
Is there a setting in BIOS that I'm missing, or a BIOS revision
that will set the drive on SATA1 as the permanent boot device?
The 200 Gb contains the OS. (XP-Pro SP2)

Work around:
Ever since I purchased this m/b I've lived with resetting the boot
priority each time. Not a big problem, but it would be nice if
there is a solution.

Tried:
Checked ASUS support for similar problem: none mentioned
Searched this newgroup for similar problem: none found
Googled for similar problem: none found


Thank you for your attention.

Chmeee_AB_CDN

 

[Kenny]

Would it not be simpler to use an external HDD enclosure?

 

[Chmeee]

Would it not be simpler to use an external HDD enclosure?

Not really. As I said, it's not a big problem, but it seems odd that
the AMI programmers would not provide a setting that would
stick. If it's not available, it will remain as a minor annoyance
until this system becomes obsolete enough to upgrade.

-C