serial ATA had drive addition

[Dan C.]

If I install a serial ATA hard drive to my existing IDE hard drive, will
the serial ATA take over as the C drive? I have to know in case I have to
reinstall XP. Thanks for any help.

Dan

 

[BruceM]

Depends on which board it is & if you have the setup set to boot from IDE
&if you select to boot from your existing HD then nothing will change.
In other words check out your setup thoroughly first.

 

[RBM]

When you install the drive, you set it up in the boot section of the bios to
NOT boot from it . If you're attaching it to the slave of your ide cable,
make sure it is set as slave on the drive

 

[RBM]

Scrap that slave business, you did say SATA, they only have masters

 

[johns]

Don't do it. The SATA is the C-drive !!!!! You will
have to pull the IDE drive off IDE 0, and you will have
a mess. You can put the IDE drive on IDE 1 to recover
data from it. Some mobos are fairly smart ( and that
is rare ), and might sort it out for you. I say don't do it.
What I did with a 160 gig IDE, was take it out and put
it in one of the new USB drive boxes ( about $60 at
Staples or Office Depot ) and used it as a hot swap
USB drive for archiving data. Nice. I reinstalled the
system to my new SATA drive to get the fast formatting
etc. Then I was able to pull all my data from the USB
drive, and reformat it as an archive for data and backups.

johns

 

[Dee]

If I install a serial ATA hard drive to my existing IDE hard drive, will
the serial ATA take over as the C drive? I have to know in case I have to
reinstall XP. Thanks for any help.

Dan

What motherboard do you have? You should be able to set the boot
sequence in the BIOS to make the SATA drive C: for booting. You will
not be able to transfer you current setup to the SATA drive. You will
have re-install XP and you will need the SATA drivers on a floppy to be
used during installation.

If you want to leave it that way, no problem. I would disconnect the
IDE drive before I installed XP. This will insure the SATA is the C;
drive. Then reconnect the IDE after installation. Initially it will be
the E; drive and the CD will be the D; drive, but you can change that.

 

[Bob Troll]

There's plenty of old wives tales and misinformation to plunder from this
thread although there is some wisdom as well.

First of all, what do you want to do with the sata drive. Is it to become
your booter?

If the sata is to be your new booter, try the copying software from the
manufacturer or use Ghost to clone the drive. Then as another has suggested,
set the boot order in the bios to boot from the sata first and you are done.
Then you can reformat the existing ide drive or whatever you want to do with
it.

If you just want to add the sata as another drive, then do just that and
leave your boot order as HDD0 or whatever.

Do not be mislead by the "experts" who claim otherwise.

FWIW, I have 2 machines running with both sata and ide drives and yes the
onboard ide is considered by the motherboard to be the "Main" or "First" set
of boot devices, but by adjusting the bios to boot from sata first, all is
just fine and dandy.

Regards, Bob "hopelessly insane machine warrior" Troll

 

[johns]

Ha! You are about to lose a world of data. That IDE
drive sitting on IDE 0 is going to change its mind
sooner or later, and your SATA drive is sort of not
going to be there at all !!!! Boot order is not going to
stop that. You've got a kluge, and the first time your
BIOS decides it doesn't agree with your drive assignments, your SATA drive
is going to change
drive letters, and you can't restore a boot partition
once that happens. You can't have anything on IDE 0
if you boot from the SATA ...

johns

 

[Dee]

Ha! You are about to lose a world of data. That IDE
drive sitting on IDE 0 is going to change its mind
sooner or later, and your SATA drive is sort of not
going to be there at all !!!! Boot order is not going to
stop that. You've got a kluge, and the first time your
BIOS decides it doesn't agree with your drive assignments, your SATA drive
is going to change
drive letters, and you can't restore a boot partition
once that happens. You can't have anything on IDE 0
if you boot from the SATA ...

johns

You are ABSOLUTELY W R O N G!!!! You have no clue about what you're
talking about!!!!

I have both IDE and SATA drives in my computer and I can boot any way I
want. When I boot from the SATA it is the C: drive. When I boot from
the IDE it is the C: drive.

 

[Bob Troll]

Johns, with all due respect to your obvious lack of knowledge regarding how
hard drives and computers work, wouldn't it be wiser for you to just read
postings and comment on things that are you are sure of? The OP is actually
looking for a solid answer for his/her question, not some wild-eyed,
half-baked comment from left field that is full of disinformation! We can
only hope that the OP has enough wisdom to ignore your ramblings as the
newsgroups are supposed to be a place where an individual can get good
advice and not be misdirected.

I've been working with computers (repairing, building etc) since 1968. How
about you???

Regards, Bob "hopelessly insane machine warrior" Troll