Connection of Drives and Motherboard change

[slovell]

I am currently upgrading my system and am trying to figure what MOBO to get
and how to hook up the hard drives.
I don't particularly want to get involved with RAID
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

I am installing a new:
Power Supply - Seasonic 400 Watt Super Tornado
Memory - 2 Crucial 512MB PC2700 DIMMS
CPU - AMD Athlon XP Barton 3200+ 400 FSB
Heatsink & Fan - Scythe Kamakaze SCKM-1000

I'm running Windows 2000 Pro OS
& currently have 2 - 40GB ATA Hard Drives and 1 - CD/RW

I must upgrade my MOBO and was considering the A7N8X Deluxe because of it's
SATA support.
That would give me the option of hooking up say a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
SATA drive in the future.

My questions are . .

Can I switch out the MOBO and other components without reformatting c:
drive,
re-installing Windows and all other programs?

Can the ATA drives operate off the SATA interface and say the burner off the
IDE?

If I also had a an SATA hard drive, could that be put on one SATA connector
and the IDE hard drives on the other?

Also any advice on Motherboard models and brands would be welcome . .
but I'm partial to ASUS.

Thanks
Stephen

 

[Ben Pope]

I am currently upgrading my system and am trying to figure what MOBO to
get and how to hook up the hard drives.
I don't particularly want to get involved with RAID
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

I am installing a new:
Power Supply - Seasonic 400 Watt Super Tornado
Memory - 2 Crucial 512MB PC2700 DIMMS
CPU - AMD Athlon XP Barton 3200+ 400 FSB
Heatsink & Fan - Scythe Kamakaze SCKM-1000

Get PC3200.

The nForce chipset likes running RAM and FSB in synch.

I'm running Windows 2000 Pro OS
& currently have 2 - 40GB ATA Hard Drives and 1 - CD/RW

I must upgrade my MOBO and was considering the A7N8X Deluxe because of
it's SATA support.
That would give me the option of hooking up say a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
SATA drive in the future.

My questions are . .

Can I switch out the MOBO and other components without reformatting c:
drive,
re-installing Windows and all other programs?

That would largely depend on the chipset you were coming from, but I'll
assume you're not coming from an nForce1.

Some people have managet to get away with it, with a repair install, but I
would expect to have to deal with a full reinstall, just in case.

Can the ATA drives operate off the SATA interface and say the burner off
the IDE?

You can get convertors for ATA->SATA, so yes.

If I also had a an SATA hard drive, could that be put on one SATA
connector and the IDE hard drives on the other?

Yes, which would negate the need for adaptors.

Also any advice on Motherboard models and brands would be welcome . .
but I'm partial to ASUS.

My A7N8X Deluxe Rev2.0 is an excellent motherboard. Abit NF7-S is also
considered good.

Ben

 

[DaveW]

To answer your first question. NO.
If you change the motherboard in an XP based computer you must reformat the
harddrive and do a clean install of the OS if you want to avoid ongoing
nasty Registry errors.

 

[Tim]

Dave, your getting to be a bit of a worry.

- Tim

 

[Ben Pope]

To answer your first question. NO.
If you change the motherboard in an XP based computer you must reformat
the harddrive and do a clean install of the OS if you want to avoid
ongoing nasty Registry errors.

Formatting the hard drive is a bit strong and unnecassary. Reinstalling the
OS is a distinct possibility.

Ben

 

[Dick]

I've always done a 'repair install' when changing motherboards with
WinXP. This way I can preserve my data and programs.

Dick

 

[Ben Pope]

I've always done a 'repair install' when changing motherboards with
WinXP. This way I can preserve my data and programs.

Indeed, but it doesn't always work.

I've read here that you need to do the second repair install, where you
install as normal but let it pick up the existing installation, and then
repair. Any comments?

Ben

 

[Dick]

Nope. Only 1 repair install has been needed in my experience. I've taken
my XP system from a VIA to a SIS to a VIA to an Intel chipset
motherboard and have only done repair installs. Of course you do have to
redo the Windows Updates, but you have to do this with a fresh install
too. And reinstall all your applications. So, for me, repair install is
the way to go.

Dick

 

[Ben Pope]

Nope. Only 1 repair install has been needed in my experience. I've taken
my XP system from a VIA to a SIS to a VIA to an Intel chipset
motherboard and have only done repair installs. Of course you do have to
redo the Windows Updates, but you have to do this with a fresh install
too. And reinstall all your applications. So, for me, repair install is
the way to go.

Ahh, you misunderstood. When you get the windows install, it asks to repair
or install windows, you click install, then it searches and finds your
existing installation and you repair it.

So it's the second option, not doing it twice.

Ben

 

[Dick]

Yes. I click 'install', then select 'repair'.

Dick