Sata as boot, IDE as storage

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SapperX

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I'm sure this is incredibly easy, I have just never done it. I have a Sata drive with vista as my boot drive, and another IDE set up as my IDE master. What is the best way to use my IDE as a storage drive, since currently I can't access files within it.
 
well....you can explain further why you can't access files within it...

otherwise all i could say is, drag files into it...save as...into it...yadda yadda...same as you would any drive :p

it would be akin to me...having a sata drive as my vista, an external that is sometimes usb, sometimes esata....and if I burn things...I would put the data onto my ide cd burner
 
Well I have it working right now with vista installed on both drives, but now I have to confirm everything I save onto that drive... plus it is using 10gigs for the OS I don't need. There must be a better way to do this.
 
You should have only on OS on the Sata drive. Unless you want to dual boot for some reason. Its hard to understand what you mean. Did you install vista twice once on each hard drive. If not then the other question i think your asking is that when you install anything or save anything it automatically assumes you want it on the drive with vista not the one you want for storage.
If its just files like pictures then just point them the the storage drive If it installed programs just point them to wherever you want then upon setup.
 
The problem is that unless I install vista on both hard drives (once), the storage drive does not show up under my computer or anything, just bios. I know there is a way to do this without installing vista uselessly on the hard drive, but I haven't found it. Other then that it works perfectly.
 
If it doesnt show up under My Computer:

Start > right click on Computer > Manage > Disk Management > Find the drive listed under there (should be unpartitioned space) > right click > create partition > format the drive though there.
 
I have a setup just like yours. I have a SATA drive for my OS and a standard IDE drive for storage. I just made the SATA master and the IDE slave. Works fine, but like it was said before, you might need to manually format the drive and create a drive letter so it will show up in the OS.
 
I'm sure this is incredibly easy, I have just never done it. I have a Sata drive with vista as my boot drive, and another IDE set up as my IDE master. What is the best way to use my IDE as a storage drive, since currently I can't access files within it.

Go into your motherboard BIOS.

Step 1. make sure that SATA has been turn on.

Step 2. check under your bios to make sure that your SATA drive is detecting. Yoiu might been to save and reboot from step 1 before you can do this

Check your Sata power and data.

Check your sata drive in another PC to make sure that it's still working.

If it still can not detect, you might want to change the SATA channel on your SATA Drive. Or swap your IDE channel around. Some cheaper motherboard make SATA 0 and SATA 1 share the same channel as IDE 1 Master and Slave.

Step 3. under one of those menu's you should have hard drive boot order.
Make sure that your SATA drive is before your IDE in your boot order.
 
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