Connecting a SATA and IDE drive

[mnitin73]

I have bought a new Seagate SATA drive as my system was very slow due
to hard drive problem. However, I want to continue using the older hard
drive as a additional storage. I installed windows on the SATA drive
and both are connected as masters. But the startup is still slow as it
takes time to detect the older drive. Advice on following - I have one
IDE drive, one SATA drive and a DVD-CDRW combo drive. The MB has one
IDE slot and 4 SATA slots. I want to boot from the SATA drive. What is
the best way of connecting them including whether to make them master
/slave/primary/secondary etc. Thanx
Nitin

 

[Marcel Overweel]

I have bought a new Seagate SATA drive as my system was very slow due
to hard drive problem. However, I want to continue using the older hard
drive as a additional storage. I installed windows on the SATA drive
and both are connected as masters. But the startup is still slow as it
takes time to detect the older drive. Advice on following - I have one
IDE drive, one SATA drive and a DVD-CDRW combo drive. The MB has one
IDE slot and 4 SATA slots. I want to boot from the SATA drive. What is
the best way of connecting them including whether to make them master
/slave/primary/secondary etc. Thanx
Nitin

Hi,

Best setup:
SATA harddrive on the 1st SATA port.
IDE harddrive as master on the IDE cable.
and the combo drive as slave on the IDE cable.

But I think the question would be why the old drive got slow in the first
place.
Maybe the old drives logic is damaged somehow which makes the detection of
the drive very slow.
And I would make sure the old drive is still usable without the risk of
losing important data.
At least do a full scan to search for bad sectors and such.

regards,
Marcel

 

[Guest]

I have bought a new Seagate SATA drive as my system was very slow due
to hard drive problem. However, I want to continue using the older hard
drive as a additional storage. I installed windows on the SATA drive
and both are connected as masters. But the startup is still slow as it
takes time to detect the older drive. Advice on following - I have one
IDE drive, one SATA drive and a DVD-CDRW combo drive. The MB has one
IDE slot and 4 SATA slots. I want to boot from the SATA drive. What is
the best way of connecting them including whether to make them master
/slave/primary/secondary etc.

If you have reasons to doubt the condition of the PATA, download the
diagnostics/test software from the drive manufuacturer's web site and
test it. That web site will allow you to check whether it is still under
warranty, if it does have a fault.

If you have only one IDE slot then you don't have much choice as to what
to do with two PATA devices. Stick them on the cable going to that slot.
It doesn't really matter which you make master - but it is conventional
to make it the HDD. The interface will run at the clock rate of the
slowest device, eg if the DVD is 100 and the HDD 133, both will run at
100. However, DMA is per device, so worth setting DMA active where the
unit supports it.

If the PATA drives passes the diagnostic tests, I would consider getting
an external firewire/USB2 box and sticking the drive in that. Just power
it up and plug it in when needed. That will prolong its life, if it is
only used very infrequently.

The main thing that shortens HDD life, other than throwing it around, is
temperature. It also greatly affects access times. Putting the PATA in
an external box will reduce the thermal input into the case and possibly
mean that the SATA doesn't follow the same fate.