Motherboard - SATA vs IDE

[jw]

I am in the market for a new motherboard because my oldie quit on me.
I am startled to discover that all new motherboards on the market seem
to have only one IDE header, allowing for only two PATA hard drives.

I want to continue using my older PATA hard drives, and I want to be
able to boot from them selectively as I do now. I use the dual-boot
technique allowed for in the boot.ini file. Yes, I am running XP.

I've been told one cannot boot from IDE Extender cards. I don't know
if one can boot from a PATA drive connected to a SATA header via an
adapter, but I have been told probably not.

I'd rather not buy four new hard drives. Anyone have any advice?

Thanks

Duke

 

[Paul]

I am in the market for a new motherboard because my oldie quit on me.
I am startled to discover that all new motherboards on the market seem
to have only one IDE header, allowing for only two PATA hard drives.

I want to continue using my older PATA hard drives, and I want to be
able to boot from them selectively as I do now. I use the dual-boot
technique allowed for in the boot.ini file. Yes, I am running XP.

I've been told one cannot boot from IDE Extender cards. I don't know
if one can boot from a PATA drive connected to a SATA header via an
adapter, but I have been told probably not.

I'd rather not buy four new hard drives. Anyone have any advice?

Thanks

Duke

The BIOS uses something called (extended) INT 0x13 for boot
support on separate controller cards. If you want to boot
from a separate two port IDE card, then the card needs its
own BIOS chip. The BIOS chip contains the INT 0x13 code.
The main BIOS detects the card during POST, and loads
the BIOS from the card. And that is how it figures out
how to boot. This even works for separately plugged in
RAID cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INT_13

As long as the card you add, has the BIOS chip on it,
and "INT 19 capture" is enabled in the motherboard BIOS
setup screen, the motherboard should be able to support
booting from it. Sometimes, it make take a few minutes, to
figure out what the item is that you want to enable, to boot
from it. (19 is the decimal equivalent of hexidecimal 0x13,
and the BIOS writers are a bit dopey to break convention.
If two BIOS writers were talking to one another, they'd
certainly refer to it using 0x13. Putting 19 on the
BIOS screen is a disservice.)

I have three Promise IDE cards here, and boot from them
regularly.

On this card, the BIOS version is printed on a label
stuck to the chip. It implies the main chip is an
IDE controller, and also contains some BIOS code in
internal memory. (I'm not aware of a datasheet
being available for that chip, and some details
about it would be interesting.)

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/16-102-007-03.jpg

On this card, you can see the BIOS chip on the left of
the picture. This is more typical of storage controllers.

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/15-158-081-03.jpg

The BIOS chip on some cards is flashable. Some of the
SATA add-in cards, allow changing them from "vanilla SATA"
to RAID controllers, by changing the contents of the BIOS
chip. That would include a different set of 0x13 routines.
So for some types of controller cards, you get to learn
about flashing them, soon after buying them. I wouldn't
expect that to be necessary with the IDE card you're about
to buy.

This is one of the older IDE controllers which is still
for sale. This one is based on SIL0680 (originally made
by CMD, but Silicon Image bought CMD and spruced up the
chip design that is still offered today). The BIOS chip
on this one, has the blue dot on it.

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/16-124-001-03.jpg

If you read the advertising for a product, and it
says explcitiy "will not boot", then you know that
function is broken. If the booting function is
broken, the card can still be used for "data" drives.
All it takes is the installation of the OS driver, and
then the card will be accessible through the OS.

Paul

 

[jw]

So what? You can only start the boot from one place, which has to
be readable before the OS is initialized. Such systems as GRUB can
then select what OS to boot. So use at least one of your IDE
drives.

I did not realize that. So you're saying that if I have three drives,
each with its own OS, that it is the boot.ini on the first one that
makes the other work if one of them is selected at boot time?

I was just guarding against the case where the c-drive could crash,
and I might want to boot up from one of the other drives independently
and by itself as a new c-drive. I in fact could do that before I lost
the MOBO. I never had to, but I did test that scenario.

Don't forget that you can make multiple partitions on any drive,
and thus enable all OSs to boot from that drive. The OSs are then
responsible for enabling other drives needed.

If my hard drive become totally unusable, then I would lose all
partitions threreon. That bothered me.

Thanks

Duke

 

[reikred]

I am in the market for a new motherboard because my oldie quit on me.
I am startled to discover that all new motherboards on the market seem
to have only one IDE header, allowing for only two PATA hard drives.

When I looked in year 2007 the board that stood out was an AMD AM2
board: ASUS M2NPV-VM.
It supports 4*sata and 4*ide drives. But you are perhaps looking for
an Intel board?
This board uses the Nvidia MCP51+geforce6150 chipset, so that must be
where 4*ide
comes from.

I've had some POST problems with the board, but otherwise it has been
good.

 

[CBFalconer]

I did not realize that. So you're saying that if I have three
drives, each with its own OS, that it is the boot.ini on the
first one that makes the other work if one of them is selected
at boot time?

Provided those drives are readable without the OS loaded drivers.
With segments you can put enough of each system on the first drive
so that they load and energize their own drivers before attaching
the drives. You can make the segments as small as you like.

 

[jw]

To do that, have full bootable use of the other drives if
the one normally loading windows were to fail, you cannot
rely on the boot.ini file.

Suppose you have three drives. Let's say #1 is normally
your C partition, 2 is D, 3 is E.

C has windows installed to it, it's your normal boot drive.
On that drive is the NT boot loader which checks boot.ini to
see what OS options there are and provide the boot menu for
Windows. While that boot menu can easily enough point to
drive D or E to boot an OS on those, if C fails you don't
have that boot loader anymore.

To overcome this you would unplug all but the drive you're
installing the OS to, install it and it will put a boot
loader on that drive, then repeat this by unplugging that
drive and only plugging in the third drive and installing an
OS to it. Done this way they all have a bootloader and by
selecting which drive is the boot drive within the bios you
have no loss of bootability should one of the drives fail
(although in some cases you might have to unplug the failed
drive to get the system to proceed to boot from a different
drive.

I agree completely. I have already done exactly that. And it works.
I have tested the scenarios. Heck, I even discovered in the process
that one can boot from a solitary hard drive whether it is Primary
Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave. That
surprised me. Hence no need to move IDE connections.

Duke

 

[jw]

When I looked in year 2007 the board that stood out was an AMD AM2
board: ASUS M2NPV-VM.
It supports 4*sata and 4*ide drives. But you are perhaps looking for
an Intel board?
This board uses the Nvidia MCP51+geforce6150 chipset, so that must be
where 4*ide
comes from.

I've had some POST problems with the board, but otherwise it has been
good.

Seems to no longer be available.

Thanks anyway

Duke

 

[Mike Walsh]

You can boot from a PCI - IDE card. It will appear in the BIOS as a SCSI device.