Sorry - another SATA A7N8X DlX question.

[kpfeif]

Hi.

It seems that I'm oblivious until I need to do something new...so yet
again I find myself lacking knowledge...

I have a A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I have two IDE hard drives, and
two optical drives - one DVD-ROM, the other a DVD-R/W.

I need more hard drive space. Big images and video are eating up
available hard drive space. It appears I have no more available IDE
spots available, so can I go ahead and install a SATA drive as well?
Three hard drives and two opticals? Seems nuts to me, considering my
first machine was an Atari 800 with a whopping 127K. Cool, man.

The SATA drive would just be a data drive - I wouldn't boot from it.
I've also seen various posts suggesting different configurations -
e.g., optical drive A as Primary Master, hard drive B as secondary
slave, etc. Any recommended setups for my machine?

Thanks a bunch,
Kris

 

[Ron]

Hmm. Sure, you can do exactly that. np. But...

Ideally, the SATA would be my first choice for the boot drive, unless you're
antsy about fresh-installing. If so, then my suggestion would be to pick up
*two* SATA drives, and config them in a RAID0 aray. This would provide a
ton of storage...and it would be really fast as well. This would allow you
to avoid re-installing Windows, as the 2 new drives would be purely fast
storage.

As for the rest of the system; obviously one of your IDE's is already the
PRI/MSTR. I'd put the second IDE on as PRI/SLV, and both optical's on the
SEC channel.

Please post a follow-up.
Ron

 

[Peter van der Goes]

Hi.

It seems that I'm oblivious until I need to do something new...so yet
again I find myself lacking knowledge...

I have a A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I have two IDE hard drives, and
two optical drives - one DVD-ROM, the other a DVD-R/W.

I need more hard drive space. Big images and video are eating up
available hard drive space. It appears I have no more available IDE
spots available, so can I go ahead and install a SATA drive as well?
Three hard drives and two opticals? Seems nuts to me, considering my
first machine was an Atari 800 with a whopping 127K. Cool, man.

The SATA drive would just be a data drive - I wouldn't boot from it.
I've also seen various posts suggesting different configurations -
e.g., optical drive A as Primary Master, hard drive B as secondary
slave, etc. Any recommended setups for my machine?

Thanks a bunch,
Kris

The short answer is: Yes, you can leave everything else as-is and add a SATA
drive as an additional storage device. You don't have to reconfigure what
you already have, and you don't have to mess with RAID unless you *want* to
get two drives and set it up.

 

[Arnie Berger]

Hi.

It seems that I'm oblivious until I need to do something new...so yet
again I find myself lacking knowledge...

I have a A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I have two IDE hard drives, and
two optical drives - one DVD-ROM, the other a DVD-R/W.

I need more hard drive space. Big images and video are eating up
available hard drive space. It appears I have no more available IDE
spots available, so can I go ahead and install a SATA drive as well?
Three hard drives and two opticals? Seems nuts to me, considering my
first machine was an Atari 800 with a whopping 127K. Cool, man.

The SATA drive would just be a data drive - I wouldn't boot from it.
I've also seen various posts suggesting different configurations -
e.g., optical drive A as Primary Master, hard drive B as secondary
slave, etc. Any recommended setups for my machine?

Thanks a bunch,
Kris

SATA drives are one approach, but it may be more cost effective,
especially if you want as much bang for the buck as possible, to
obtain a PCI IDE expansion card. If you buy a boxed Maxtor drive you
can usually get them for free, or at worst, buy it for $30. I just
added a 200 GB Maxtor drive and I got a free PCI expansion card. It
cost me about $100 after sending in all the rebate forms.

I'm sure SATA will soon overtake PATA as the standard, but right now,
the vanilla IDE drives are the lowest cost per byte available. The
down side is the cable management and air flow issues associated with
a box full of the big PATA cable.

arnie

Arnie

 

[jankin]

...If you buy a boxed Maxtor drive you
can usually get them for free, or at worst, buy it for $30. I just
added a 200 GB Maxtor drive and I got a free PCI expansion card. It
cost me about $100 after sending in all the rebate forms...

Same problem, but where in the heck did you find this sweet a deal?
Please tell, I want one too (PCI-IDE and 200gigs for $100)!

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