Hard drive setup
 

Right, currently I have a sata HD in my pc ( 80gb ) but no floppy drive on my pc nor driver floppy for the harddrive, now I wish to install my 80gb IDE as a slave, and format both HD's putting Windows XP Pro onto the main HD ( sata ) and my music etc on the IDE 80gb HD, is this possible?

Also will I likely hit issues not having a floppy drive or cd driver disk ( Mesh Computers supplied a XP Home Sp2 OEM ) as I have heard SATA harddrives to be problematic without drivers.

Thanks all and I hope I made enough sense there :erm:

Re: Hard drive setup
 

You may need to load some SATA drivers when installing Windows. These will have come with your motherboard CD.
You dont always have to use the extra drivers, it depends on the setup.
If needed, you will need to press F6 (If I recall correctly) when it reboots to install these drivers.

It is very much possible to have the Hard drives configured the way you say and there should be no problem with this configuration.

If you need drivers, check out your motherboard website and it should have them on there.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Normally, you will only need to load specific SATA drivers before as part of the windows installation if you are trying to add a RAID setup. That is unlikley in your case since you aren't matching the HD sizes.

If you do need to load such drivers it could be an interesting challenge without a floppy drive. Windows might not be able to read them from a manufacturer's CD. I would expect any drivers needed to be on the OEM CD you were supplied with, or on a separate motherboard CD also supplied with your PC.

If your PC will not start up reading the OEM CD check your BIOS settings for startup drive options and see that the CD is listed.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

As Rob says, there should be enough SATA drivers in XP to load the OS.

Another alternative is to build a slipstreamed XP CD with the correct drivers (http://www.nliteos.com/index.html apparently makes this easy).

Why do you want to reformat the Sata drive? you could just add the IDE drive, copy the data over. Partition Magic would allow you to extend the partition to cover the whole drive if thats a problem.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

What is slipstream........I've seen it mentioned before? :dunce:

Re: Hard drive setup
 

In a nutshell, you create a customised CD with XP & drivers all on the same disk.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Moving away from my main thought in this thread to a new one which hit me.

My programs and games come to nearly 70gb which is daft on a 80gb main drive, so I am thinking of buying 2 new 200gb drives, on a IDE interface and wiring them in master and slave, the sata and 80gb IDE I have I plan to make the IDE 80gb into a external with a caddy, is it possible to make a SATA a external as well? as I think with 2 Harddrives in my micro atx tower its going to be rather busy.


( excuse the bump did not realise how far down it was )

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Externak SATA is possible, theres a caddy here
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...ive_Racks.html

Re: Hard drive setup
 

:tu: Thanks Paul, shall look into that, I think with 400gb internal and 160gb external I finally should have enough space for all my Jessica Alba stuff. :LOL:

Re: Hard drive setup
 

You can get backplates for Sata which just routes 2 of the motherboards sata ports to external,I have 2 sata drives external with no need for a caddy and full Sata spec so no speed loss,Also as long as your mobo supports it and you use the new type power connector these are also hot swapable

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Thanks ZB, but my idea would be to have 160gb of external HD to be portable around country with me, so I have my best programs with me ( paid for system mechanic etc ( with suitable license for multiple computers) and my personal music collection. )

Re: Hard drive setup
 

why buy a sata when an ide is cheaper? seeing as our going to be turning into a usb 2 drive I can't see the point in using a sata drive

Re: Hard drive setup
 

I currently have a IDE 80gb which is not plugged in, and a SATA 80gb harddrive which is the single HD in this machine.

However I plan on buying 2 IDE interface 200gb Harddrives and some narrow IDE leads and installing them as master/slave, then fitting the sata harddrive and the ide 80gb harddrive into a external caddy, then using them to move data back and forth from my friends without multiple dvd'r's etc.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

The benefits of SATA, primarily speed, will be lost connecting externally unless the PCs each have a SATA card to which you can connect directly.

I'd leave the SATA you have connected internally to your current PC. If you want an external direve to carry around just use a standard IDE drive.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Drivers are a issue my pc has not got a floppy drive, and I have no drivers for the motherboard nor the SATA HD, now I have to dig up drivers for my motherboard, but if XP will not format onto this HD due to driver error I would like my other IDE HD's to be ready.

I do not game all that much hence I do not have a watercooled monster computer, most of my time I am chatting on forums or on Flight Sim 2004 messing about, and for those few extra seconds in performance if that is messing for hours with drivers worth it?

Re: Hard drive setup
 

but if drivers are an issue, surely they would remains so, and a bigger one, if you put the SATA into a caddy to cart around with you?

You may not game much but things like Flight Sim 2004 will probably show a difference between the SATA and an IDE drive. As the SATA wil have noticeably faster access times than IDE, I'd keep it as your primary windows HD.

As I said before I expect you only need to load specific SATA drivers if you are using a RAID card configuration. If you were doing that you'd have at least two SATA drives, which you do not. I would expect a win XP reinstall from the Mesh CD you have to take you through allthe steps needed without need for floppy drives, or other driver installs prior to windows installing. Of course once windows is runing, you will need to install current patches, antivurus, etc. and at that point some updated drivers may be desired. Indeed if you go to the Mesh webiste, they may well offer updated drivers for you to download now, before you start, which you could burn to CD.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

I see I am planning on moving to a copy of Windows Xp Pro I am buying soon, so what would I be best doing? perhaps buying a 200gb IDE to use as a slave? would this just wire in and be detected by the computer and Windows ( providing I set jumpers on the IDE 200gb to slave? )

Re: Hard drive setup
 

Yes it should be fine. Hard drives on IDE and Hard drives on SATA are totally seperate and will not cnflict.
On your IDE drives, just set one as master and one as slave.

Re: Hard drive setup
 

I am hoping to get my 80gb SATA as my windows and a single 200gb IDE, would I wire in the single IDE as master or slave? to the SATA ?

Re: Hard drive setup
 

also when u install hard drive make sure u partition it and align the jumpershunt correctly.


when i installed my 160gb serial ata, i fitted it properly, but then spent hours working out what was wrong when nothing happened!

Re: Hard drive setup
 

I plan on leaving my SATA as it is, with only a format of Xp Pro Sp2 being put onto it, then installing a IDE 200gb Harddrive and set it as slave on the jumpers, and letting Windows detect it, then running a format as NTFS once in Windows.