P4P800 Deluxe - Can I add SATA drives as extra drives in a previously PATA setup

[Bob Rafuse]

Hardware:
Asus P4P800 Deluxe
Software:
Win XP Pro SP1

New to S-ATA drives, so pardon if this is a stupid question.

I have an Asus P4P800 Deluxe with the IDE configuration set to P-ATA
only. My Primary IDE channel, which shows up as 'Third Master' on
boot screen during power-up, contains two IDE HDs, my boot disc and a
data disc. My Secondary IDE channel ('Third slave') has a DVD+/-RW
and a IDE ZIP drive.

I am looking at adding another large data drive and was wondering:

Can I buy a S-ATA drive, change the BIOS IDE Configuration to
P-ATA/S-ATA and have the S-ATA drive simply appear as an E: drive in
Windows XP? Or will the mobo expect to boot off the S-ATA since its
listed as 'First Master' on the boot screen?

TIA

 

[end user]

My bios is set to "Sata" and "enhanced" configuration. Installed a
160 gig WD as third master. The system did a small hickup on the 160
gig although I had XPpro Sp1 (more than the 137 barrier). I
partitioned the drive as it was my original intention and everything
is running smooth.

I cloned over the main partition to the sata drive and configured bios
to boot off the new sata drive no problem.

You will note that a sata drive has lower transfer speeds than a
regular IDE drive due to the onboard pata to sata bridge. In my case
normal transfer speeds for a WD 7200rpm with 8 mg cache is 46 mb/s
while for the sata drive (still with 7200 rpm & 8 mg cache) it is only
34 mb/s.

The sata drive is no longer my boot drive but it makes a good storage
drive.

Locust

 

[Bob Rafuse]

Thanks!