SERIAL ATA question - HELP!

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calcnerd

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got my new computer setup finally after 2 days of fiddling with it. turns out BIOS doesn't recognize ATA drives, b/c they're considered to be SCSI/RAID drives. of course the drivers for the ATA are on a cd, and the computer doesnt have an option to look for a cd. i had to boot from a 98 system disk to get to the A prompt & copy them to a blank floppy & install from there & then windows would recognize that i do have a hard disk installed.

so now here is my problem. i'm trying to set up my secondary hard drive as an IDE drive. the problem is that since BIOS doesn't recognize ATA drives, when i enable the IDE drive there, whether its master, slave, etc, the computer thinks its the only drive on the computer & tries to boot from it, causing it to hang. is there a way to make an IDE drive a slave with an ATA master? thanks a lot.
 
It would make things much easier if u mention the make/model of the motherboard ..
'coz i think ..ur board would have an Ata support
 
sorry. here's my specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64, 3000+ 800Mhz FSB
Motherboard: Gigabyte, Athlon 64, NVIDIA chipset, GA-K8N PRO Motherboard
Memory: 512MB PC3200 400MHZ DDR RAM Memory
Video: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce FX5600XT 256MB DDR-RAM 8X AGP w/ TV-Out
Audio: Sound Blaster compatible AC97 3D sound
Hard Drive: Western Digital 120.0GB Hard Drive 8Mb Cache 7200 RPM SATA 150Mbs/sec
CD-RW/DVD: TDK, Dual Format 4X DVD+-R/RW and CD-R/RW, IDE
 
It doesn't look like your motherboard supports the SATA drive. (Which your hard drive is.)

Here is the spec:

Onboard SATA/RAID: Silicon Image sil3512, GigaRAID ATA 133
 
yes, it does support it. from the users manual:

OnBoard IDE:

- 2 IDE controllers provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM (IDE1, IDE2) with PIO, Bus Master (Ultra DMA33/ATA66/ATA100/ATA133) operation modes.

- IDE3 and IDE4 compatible with RAID, Ultra ATA133/100, IDE
 
Since we are on the topic, I was just wondering if you can enable a SATA drive on your primary IDE mother board slot, while enabling a regular ATA drive on your secondary.
 
UHHHHhhhhh?

ATA:
Short for: Advanced Technology Attachment, a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself. There are several versions of ATA, all developed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee:

ATA: Known also as IDE, supports one or two hard drives, a 16-bit interface and PIO modes 0, 1 and 2.

ATA-2: Supports faster PIO modes (3 and 4) and multiword DMA modes (1 and 2). Also supports logical block addressing (LBA) and block transfers. ATA-2 is marketed as Fast ATA and Enhanced IDE (EIDE).

ATA-3: Minor revision to ATA-2.

Ultra-ATA: Also called Ultra-DMA, ATA-33, and DMA-33, supports multiword DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps.

ATA/66: A version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that doubles ATA's throughput to 66 MBps.

ATA/100: An updated version of ATA/66 that increases data transfer rates to 100 MBps

So starting with ATA-2 what do we call this I/O interface?

IDE ?
EIDE ?
FASTATA ?
FASTATA-2 ?
ULTRA ATA ?
Most companies now call the interface by its proper name: ATA or ATAPI.

The other names are all the result of marketing hype from one or more of the companies making ATA products.

IDE was used by Conner Peripherals, Compaq and Western Digital starting back in 1986-1987. It continues to be widely used as the alternate name for ATA.

An IDE, EIDE, FASTATA or ULTRA ATA device is really an ATA (or ATAPI) device and all such devices are generally compatible with each other and can be used in the same system and even on the same ATA cable. Of course there are exceptions (devices that don't conform to the ATA or ATA/ATAPI standards).

Serial ATA or SATA is the newest version of the ATA interface. SATA claims to support all the traditional ATA functions but does it over an interface cable with only 7 wires (instead of the normal 40 wires for traditional parallel ATA interfaces). SATA also claims it will be faster but the history of serial interfaces indicates you must be careful when reading such speed claims.

Discussing SATA is difficult because: a) SATA was created by a "secret society" that prohibits members from talking outside of their meetings, b) current SATA documents are available only to the members of the "secret society", c) by the time a SATA document is made public it is basically obsolete and has been replaced by a new but secret SATA document, d) the SATA "secret society" is working with the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) committee(s) to also replace SCSI, e) the SATA documents that are public may be or will be re-published (probably with some changes?) by the T10 and T13 standards committees. All of this makes SATA a very confusing mess!

There is no doubt that SATA is in your future. SATA hard disk drives and PCI bus SATA host controllers are everywere today. And many motherboards are shipping today with SATA interfaces. If SATA proves successful, it will probably replace traditional parallel ATA with a few years.



Question here...

If you have a SATA drive, and you say that it is recognized as a SCSI/RAID ,, then to PROPERLY connect this you would require a SATA Adapter, and power ribbon that connects to the board NOT via an IDE cable,,, now yes your board will recognize and ATA drive ,, but that would be an IDE ATA I am thinking,,

With a True SATA board, to have two HDD attached ,, You need to have the adapters, and Make each SATA drives MASTER,,

I do not believe that you are able, or more,,have not found a method to combine an IDE ATA drive as slave to a SATA drive on the same MOBO,,

If there is a way,, share it..

But ,, I dont think so,,

By the by, All NON SATA drives are ATA,, referring to the board on the drive,, we call them IDE drives due to the method of connection,,

cheers
 
Just to clarify, the Serial ATA interface uses a 1:1 drive to interface conncetion. You can't have multiple drives on one interface.
To answer Larry, if you get an adapter for the SATA Drive, you can use it on the IDE interface, and use it as a slave or master. Since the SATA and IDE interfaces have different requirements for power and the physical connection, the adapter takes care of that. The speed is also adjusted to whatever your board can use. Also, the reverse is true, except you are limited to 1 drive per chanell when you connect to the SATA interface.

If and when the Serial SSCI interface is released, we might see a change in being able to daisey chain drives together, but until then...
 
calcnerd, no where on the specs that you posted above does it show SATA-150. SATA is a different standard than the ATA and uses a different connector and controller. As stated above, there is an adapter to connect your SATA hard drive. You will not get the benefits (if there are any) of the supposed superior SATA. If given the option it would probably be better to return the SATA drive for an ATA drive and this drive will be recognized automatically.
 
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