Hi, Can anyone tell me whether it is possible to have a system in which the primary HDD is connected via SATA and a secondary HDD via IDE? I'm sure it is possible, I just can't get it working =) The SATA is the main drive and is HDD-0, the IDE one is a new one I got. I tried setting it as the primary master on IDE channel 0 and I get a non-valid system disk error (so the IDE is over-riding the SATA). I also tried setting it as primary slave on IDE channel 0 but get an error during boot saying that S.M.A.R.T setting is not on, but I cant find this in the BIOS. I am running win XP pro on a gigabyte board, AMD 3200+, 1.5 GB RAM and 2 optical drives (on IDE channel 1) Can anyone advise?
I remember having sata + ide but had the OS installed on the IDE so it wasnt a problem. Have you looked through the boot settings in the BIOS?
Have you got the OS installed already? Which drive on? SATA and IDE can live along side each other very happily whether they have an OS on them or not. It is down to BIOS settings to determine which HD will be the booting device. In fact there is no real connection between the two channels type. The HDD-0 shows the SATA RAID location so if you plugged the ribbon in the other SATA socket it will probably show HDD-1 (I am pretty sure I have tried that, but I’ll be happy to be corrected.). As for the IDE - I am pretty certain your HDD should be connected to the primary channel and the CD-ROM to the secondary. The hard drive, if it’s on its own, should be connected to the end of the IDE ribbon and the jumpers at the back should be set to Master. I am assuming that 2 optical drives means one IDE HDD and one IDE CD/DVD-ROM….. In BIOS (I am referring to my BIOS settings but most BIOS settings are similar when it comes to device listing and boot order), the drive which you are intending on having the OS on, should be the first in the list of Hard disk drives. THEN, in the boot device priority list, the hard drive should be set to third after the CD-ROM and the floppy (if you have one). This will make sure that the computer looks for boot records until it finds the right one. As the CD-ROM and floppy are unlikely to have this on them the computer will locate the boot record which you have installed on the chosen drive. This will also allow you to boot from the CD-ROM when you are installing the OS. If the OS is not installed yet you will need to decide which drive it will go on because although installing on an IDE drive is very straight forward, Installing on a SATA drive is a bit trickier.
Hi guys, thanks for the responses. Sniper: The OS is on the SATA drive and I have had this for some time. The IDE drive is an additional drive that I picked up the other day. I've looked through the BIOS settings and as far as I can tell, the SATA drive is third in the boot device list, after the CD ROM and Floppy drive... sabashuali:The OS is on the SATA drive, which I've had since I built the PC a year ago and I would like this to remain the case, the IDE drive is just an additional drive I got recently. The IDE drive is connected on its own to the primary IDE channel, then I have a CD burner as the secondary master and a DVD ROM as the secondary slave. Both of these drives are fine and appear in my computer when the PC has booted. I have looked through the BIOS settings but can't seem to detect the IDE HDD...?
BIOS boot order will not normaly tell you which hard drive it is: 1st Floppy 2nd CD-ROM 3rd Hard disk/drive (could be any) It is the devices list that you need to change: (just an example) 1st IDE drive X 2nd SATA X 3rd IDE Y. Please post your BIOS maker and version and maybe someone can direct you to the right menu. Again this is how it works in my specific BIOS. If your SATA is first in the device list and the computer is not booting from it and/or you are getting error messages, disconnect the IDE HD and try again. It could be that your master boot record has become corrupted.
It says Award BIOS v6.00PC at the top of the initial boot screen..? It also says GigaRaid BIOS 1.41 02093030 on the third boot screen, the one where it lists all the IDE drives (but not the one Im trying to add!) I tried changing the boot sequence to Floppy, HDD-0, Hdd-1 but that didn't work either. The message that appears when booting is NTLDR is missing Also, my main HDD, the one with the OS on it, is NTFS, but the IDE HDD is probably FAT32 and may have data on it (its second hand), could this be the cause?
Ok, I disconnected my SATA HDD and formatted the IDE drive using the windows CD, after it formatted, I let it copy the setup files but then restarted before installing Windows. Next, reconnected the SATA HDD and tried to boot but it went to the windows setup screen rather than booting into the OS on the SATA drive. I restarted and then went into the BIOS and this time set the 1st boot device to CD ROM, the second to SCSI (which I failed to do before and I think is how DOS sees SATA drives), and the third to HDD-0 I then tried to boot with both the SATA drive and the IDE drive and it did manage to boot into the OS installed on the SATA drive. I thought it was finally working and then I got a blue screen. I disconnected the IDE drive and tried to boot again as normal but got a message saying SYSTEM file was corrupt...Thats fixed now but I still cant get the IDE and SATA drives working together... Any more suggestions/advice? Cheers
