Yes, but it's possible to get this very wrong, so read on. Problems
arise at two levels; BIOS/CMOS setup, and the OS.
The best thing is to remove all drives that could cause ambiguity at
the time the OS is installed:
- have only S-ATA, IDE or SCSI HDs present at install time
- remove all removeable disks, USB devices and card readers
If you don't do this, there is a risk that the installation process
will assign C: to a drive or device other than the boot HD.
There's generally no ambiguity when you attach HDs of the same type,
e.g. multiple IDE HDs, multiple SCSI HDs or multiple S-ATA HDs.
There's also no ambiguity when the first of these HDs has only one
primary partition on it; all other primary partitions should be hidden
by spoofing the partition type byte to something XP doesn't
understand, and most boot managers will provide that facility.
Where things go wrong is where you mix drives of different types.
Optical (CD, DVD) and classic diskette drives are OK at install time,
it's a mix of newer busses such as USB, Firewire, S-ATA and
non-standard removable disk drives such as Zip etc. that can cause
problems. This is because there may be variance between:
- which device BIOS sees as the "boot device" (boot order)
- which order these are enumerated by BIOS
- which order these are enumerated by OS PnP
Generally, the OS has no idea about which drive is the boot device.
Instead, it enumerates devices via PnP, and PnP generally starts with
the equipment list that is passed to it by BIOS.
BIOS may not see USB, Firewire or devices attached via add-on
controllers at all, unless these are set as "legacy devices". For
example, a USB flash drive would normally be expected to be ignored by
BIOS and thus not passed to the OS in the equipment list, but if the
drive is present at boot time and Legacy USB is enabled in CMOS setup,
the flash drive may be passed as part of the list.
As carl has indicated there is no problem installing a SATA and PATA HD in
the same machine.
False. BIOS may handle S-ATA in different ways, in terms of how these
co-exist with IDE, and YMMV on how this is set.
At the one extreme, BIOS may handle S-ATA as additional to IDE, so
that you can use all the S-ATA connectors and all the IDE connectors
at the same time. The downside of this is that the S-ATA are unlikely
to be seen by any OS that doesn't "know" S-ATA.
At the other extreme is to operate S-ATA in "legacy mode" where
logically they are treated as IDE. The mapping is usually...
S-ATA 0 = IDE Primary Master
S-ATA 1 = IDE Primary Slave
S-ATA 2 = IDE Secondary Master
S-ATA 3 = IDE Secondary Slave
....and that obviously means you can't have an S-ATA 0 and an IDE
Primary Master installed at the same time. Less obviously, the
relationship between IDE channels and S-ATA is usualy such that the
presence of anything on an IDE channel knocks out both of the S-ATA
that correspond to that channel. So for instance, this won't work...
S-ATA 0 = boot HD
IDE Primary Slave = second HD
IDE Secondary Master = DVD writer
....because the presence of the HD on the Primary IDE clashes with
S-ATA 0, even though the IDE HD is "Slave" to S-ATA 0. When it's said
that S-ATA has no concept of Master / Slave, this extends to the
inability to co-exist with such IDE overlaying the same "space".
Instead, try...
S-ATA 0 = boot HD
IDE Secondary Master = second HD
IDE Secondary Slave = DVD writer
....or...
S-ATA 0 = boot HD
IDE Secondary Master = DVD writer
IDE Secondary Slave = second HD
....but because BIOS and/or OS PnP may enumerate all IDE before all
S-ATA irrespective of what boots first, I would remove the IDE hard
drive completely until after installing Windows. Then I'd use Admin
Tools, Storage blah blah blah to map the optical drive to a higher
letter, then add the IDE and set those volumes in between the others.
The point about Admin Tools, Storage blah blah blah is that this
CANNOT change the letter of the boot drive later. It can fudge
eveything else, but you HAVE to get the boot drive to fall naturally
on the letter you want at installation time.
There may be other S-ATA vs. IDE modes, such as completely disabling
IDE or S-ATA, and the S-ATA may be "natural" or set up as various RAID
combinations of drives (typically RAID 0 or RAID 1).
(Gerry: There is no Master/Slave positions with respect to SATA hard drives)
True.
IDE Master / Slave relationships can be defined in two ways:
1) Explicitly
Set one device to Master, set other device on same channel to Slave.
There may be additional jumper settings to distinguish between "Sole
Device", "Master with Slave Present" and "Master with
Non-ATAPI-Compliant Slave Present" - it varies with drives.
2) Cable Select
Set both devices on the same channel as Cable Select, rather than
Master or Slave. The device connected to the end of the shared IDE
data cable will be Master, and the one in the middle will be Slave.
Caveats:
Don't mix Cable Select and Master / Slave jumpers on same channel
If using 80-pin data cables, Master must be at the end and Slave must
be in the middle, even if using explicit jumpers. This is a
requirement for best signal propagation integrity. Any modern HD
(specifically, anything that uses UDMA-66 or better) should be used
with 80-pin data cables to clean up the signal quality.
The above mileage has been my experience with Intel-chipset
motherboards; YMMV depending on chipset, BIOS, etc.
---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
Don't pay malware vendors - boycott Sony
