IDE master, Sata Slave?

[Shafra]

Hello all,

Probably a dumb question, but can you run an IDE HDD as master and a Sata as slave? I had a PC die and I when I rebuild I Wanted to do a fresh install on an old IDE driver of XP and then later just add the Sata drive as a slave and access my old info. Will that work if I set the IDE jumpers to master and SATA to slave, or will I need to do something in BIOS?

Also, if running both hard drives, does it really use much extra power? I have a good PSU, but I've always just used 1 drive.

Thanks for any help

 

[Shannon]

short answer - yes, you can. Mine is set up that way, but I was booting from the IDE drive before I had any sata drives.

I think it's just cabling that'll do it but depending on your hardware you may need to set it in the bios as well.

 

[Shafra]

Awesome. I plan to just do a fresh XP pro install on the IDE HDD and later pop in the Sata and set it to slave. Hopefully will work well.

 

[The General]

If you have a SATA as a "slave" that means you bought an adapter to plug it into IDE.

SATA doesn't have master and slave, it just has harddrives on a controller.

 

[Shafra]

So how will the PC know which drive is the master? Will I do that in the BIOS once I add the SATA drive? Both drives WILL have an OS on them.

 

[The General]

So how will the PC know which drive is the master? Will I do that in the BIOS once I add the SATA drive? Both drives WILL have an OS on them.

It doesn't matter, the computer doesn't care and doesn't need to know. You can choose which one to boot from, but it makes no difference at all which is the master, I guess you could name one "master" but it wouldn't matter which. And that would just be your little nickname for it.

It's like asking what year it is in Battlestar Galactica ... we haven't gotten to Earth yet, so we don't know and it makes no difference to the story at all.

 

[Shafra]

LOL Good analogy So in terms of which HDD is booted from, that will be determed by what? BIOS? Cables and jumpers?

 

[Romani48]

you have to go to the bios and change the boot sequence.
Put your IDE HD first.
you also can use the F8 after power on your machine if your mobo is an ASUS! and select the device to boot.