Two more SATA questions

[Raphael Argus]

Hello everyone, back with two more questions.

First, I notice my new SATA drive has both standard 4-pin power connections as well as the SATA power connection. Is there any benefit to using the SATA power connection or is it the same?

Second, I'd like to keep my current IDE drive as a slave. If I setup the BIOS to make SATA0 master will it automatically prompt me to install my new OS and see the IDE drive as slave once I get into windows.

That's it! Thanks in advance.

 

[shenlingstyle]

The two power connections both will work, although the SATA power connector may be 'recommended' by some manufacturers. For me, I've used both, no difference or consequences as of yet.

For your second question, I'm not OS expert, but you should be able to choose which drive to install your OS on. There's a section that prompts you to delete/edit partitions, you should be able to tell from there which is your master and which is your slave. I 'think' that's how it works.

 

[Raphael Argus]

Thanks, I think I may just install my OS on the SATA drive and get it up and running and then hook my IDE drive up and see if I can get it recognized as a slave.

Do SATA drives require more power then an IDE or are they pretty much the same?

 

[shenlingstyle]

SATA drives require less power consumption, but I doubt it's gonna save you a sack of gold.

 

[Raphael Argus]

LOL a sack of gold I have a nice Antec power supply heading my way, but I am still relieved to hear it uses less power. I actually try not to have many components in my main system, and use my 2nd PC for all my applications and burning etc. I figure the less demand on the machine the better, and since I do some gaming not having 90 peices of software on it should keep things running a bit better.

 

[Dngrsone]

Likely the computer will look for an OS on the SATA, see nothing and then look to the IDE.

You might as well preempt that and boot off your Installation CD and start things rolling.

 

[Raphael Argus]

Good call, Dngrsone. I just noticed I have a bootable CD with the new SATA drive so I'll just fire up with that first and go from there. I'll activate the SATA controller and set it at master 0. Hopefully will go smooth Now I just have to pop in the new PSU and hope she fires up, then onto the HDD install. Fun, fun, fun! This time once I get everything setup I'm making a mirror image of my drive to use so I can set things up quickly in the future. Have an old 40gb drive I can use for that.

Any good programs for making an exact image of a HDD master? Or can I even make a mirror image of a sata on an IDE?

 

[RicoDirenzo]

It depends on your baord. If you are using a SATA is only makes sense to use that drive for your OS installation. MY intel board defaults to the Sata...both 0 and 1 first. Then it looks to the IDE PATA drives. Lets say you have 4 drives installed, 2 Sata and 2 Pata IDE's. The sata drives designation is determined by its cable postion on the mbo. The IDE's still are cable postion determined and must be jumpered correctly for their positoin on the cable (unless you use cable select settings for for and then the position only determins the master and it is the onw at the most distant connector from the IDE channel 0. I have such a setup and it looks like this in my Bios (I'm abbreviating)

Sata 0 Western Digital xxxxxxxxxx 250gig
Sata 1 Western Digital xxxxxxxxxx 180gig
IDE Master Western Digitia xxxxxxxxxx 200gig
IDE Slave Western Digital xxxxxxxxxxx 200gig

My intel board defaults to Sata o for the OS. Barring finding the OS there it defualts to the IDE Master. in the Bios, you can determine which Sata dirve you want to be the first bios read for the OS but if it is on the IDE ribbon, only the master can contain the OS if I remember correctly.

Pleeeze overlook my typing...it really sucks!!

 

[rkf76]

Raphael: In your setup, the IDE drive will not be a slave, it'll be the Master IDE

 

[Raphael Argus]

Hey All,

With everyones help my new SATA drive is up and running smoothly. When I setup the SATA drive in the BIOS I ran a combined setup configuration so I could still use my old IDE drive. Unfortunately, my PC is NOT detecting the second drive at all. My IDE drive was set to cable select and before I start aimlessly troubleshooting I figured I'd ask here.

My drive came with some MaxBlast software which I booted from initially and it formatted and setup my SATA drive. I'm only pointing this out in case it can somehow be used to setup my IDE so I can access it My IDE drive is a 75GB Western Digital, if that matters.