Set a SATA drive as first drive?

[Gerald Bramwell]

Hi,

Is it possible to have a SATA drive set as the first drive? I want to be
able to re install Windows XP home onto the SATA drive then have the IDE
drives follow on.

Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated.

Gerald

 

[LVTravel]

Hi,

Is it possible to have a SATA drive set as the first drive? I want to be
able to re install Windows XP home onto the SATA drive then have the IDE
drives follow on.

Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated.

Gerald

When you first boot from the XP install CD you need to press F6 and provide
the SATA drivers on a floppy disk to the install program. From there the
installation should be just like any install of XP.

 

[Danny Krychek]

Hi,

Is it possible to have a SATA drive set as the first drive? I want to be
able to re install Windows XP home onto the SATA drive then have the IDE
drives follow on.

Most newer computers will let you set the boot order of your disks in
the BIOS.

Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated.

When you install it, things will go much more smoothly if you
disconnect all but the SATA drive. When done, boot to it and make
sure all is well. Then shutdown, reconnect everything, startup, enter
the BIOS and set your boot order.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

Is it possible to have a SATA drive set as the first drive?

Yes, though there may be limitations imposed by the motherboard or BIOS, not
by Windows.

I want to be able to re install Windows XP home onto the SATA drive then
have the IDE drives follow on.

Definitely do-able. I have several systems configured this way.

Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated.

Read the manual for your motherboard. Some motherboards require specific
settings to enable both PATA and SATA ports, some require nothing at all.

Some boards use SATA controller chips that XP needs drivers to recognise -
many don't.

And there can be other issues.

My Thinkpad, for example, requires a SATA driver to run XP in AHCI mode, and
ACHI is enabled via the BIOS. The driver is available as a download from
Lenovo, you put it on floppy and make it available by pressing F6 when
prompted during an early part of XP Setup. The floppy is read, the driver
identified and accepted... and then you get a message that there's no hard
disk found.

What's necessary is to go back to the BIOS, shift *out* of AHCI mode, ignore
the driver, and install normally. Later, once XP is installed, reboot to
the BIOS and turn AHCI on.. .and there's no problem. The Vista install
ignores this nonsense.

Otherwise, plug the SATA drive into Port #0, and don't attach *any* other
drives during install other than the optical disk. While not strictly
necessary, this will prevent XP from deciding that your boot drive is
actually F: or something, something you won't realize to the first reboot.
Usually that arises with multi-port card readers, which should also be
disconnected at initial setup.

HTH
-pk

 

[Patrick Keenan]

When you first boot from the XP install CD you need to press F6 and
provide the SATA drivers on a floppy disk to the install program. From
there the installation should be just like any install of XP.

Oddly, sometimes this is not the case.

My Thinkpad needs the SATA driver if it's in AHCI mode, requests it, reads
it, then ignores it and says it can't find a disk. But if you install in
non-AHCI mode, there's no problem at all, and after XP is installed, you
just go back to the BIOS and turn it on.

So there can by varied system quirks that require a little bit of digging to
get around.

HTH
-pk

 

[Danny Krychek]

was thinking of doing the same thing, replace my primary IDE maxtor
hard drive (80 gb with 8mb cache) with a new Sata drive 320 gb and 16 mb
cache and leave a smaller maxtor 30 gb with 2 mb cache in..having extra
space, however i was told that my computer would possibly look for the
drive with the SLOWEST speeds..that being the maxtor 30 gb with 2mb
cache buffer.

Your computer will boot to whatever disk you tell it to boot to. Set
the boot order in the BIOS.

 

[Anna]

Your computer will boot to whatever disk you tell it to boot to. Set
the boot order in the BIOS.

harrison...
As Danny has informed you, just ensure that you've set the BIOS boot
priority order so that the system will first boot to the new SATA HDD. And
make sure you've connected that SATA drive to the first SATA connector on
the motherboard - designated SATA0 or SATA1.

And as Danny has inferred, there will be *no* "slowdown' of the system
merely because you have an older PATA HDD connected as a secondary HDD. On
the other hand don't expect too great a system speed improvement because of
the new SATA HDD. You might get a modest speed improvement but nothing
terribly significant assuming there's no change in your processor & RAM.

Any reason why you're not using your 80 GB PATA HDD as a secondary drive in
lieu of the 30 GB one? I suppose you have other plans for it, right?
Anna