Mike89 Posted May 16, 2006 Posted May 16, 2006 So far I have only used IDE hard drives. I have two. Master IDE drive into two partitions. Windows XP on first partition and files on second partition. The second IDE hard drive (Slave) is for games. I am thinking about replacing the second hard drive because I would like a larger capacity. Like 250 gigs or so. Now the question is, should I go IDE or Sata for this second drive? Can a Sata drive be used in this situation or should I just stick with IDE? I want to leave the first hard drive as is with OS on it. Can I run it this way, IDE master drive with OS on it and have a Sata drive as second drive for games? If so, what do I need to look for or do in the BIOS? I would want to copy over all the existing files from the current second IDE drive to the new second drive using Ghost. Dunno if Ghost will copy from an IDE hard drive to a Sata hard drive. If this can be done, is there any advantage of going to Sata for that second drive vs IDE? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtremeskier97 Posted May 16, 2006 Posted May 16, 2006 Yes..that will work fine. And Yes..the newest version of Ghost I know for sure clones IDE to SATA and vice versa. Good luck. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted May 16, 2006 Posted May 16, 2006 One primary advantage of SATA over IDE is the cabling. SATA cables are so much smaller, usually making them easier to work with, easier to route and improve airflow in your case. Also SATA is hot swappable. Yes the plan you are proposing will work. You can mix and match the IDE and SATA drives just about anyway you want on the Ultra-D, heck you can even span raid arrays across the SATA and PATA controllers. To enable your SATA controllers, enter your BIOS and enable the appropriate SATA controllers. They are shown as SATA 1&2, SATA 3&4 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike89 Posted May 16, 2006 Posted May 16, 2006 So when it boots up, I will see a second boot screen loading the SATA drivers? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 Yes, Windows should detect the new SATA drive and prompt you for driver installation. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 One other thing I just thought of, did you install the latest nVidia SATAII drivers during the Windows installation? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wwhat Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 I installed windows on my (only) SATA drive but I did notice that the windows cd only detected part of the drive and apparantly didn't do LBA48, however once windows was installed I could easily add the rest to it with windows's diskmanager, it did show the full capacity in the bios screen btw (afterwards, I didn't check it before installing windows.) So if you ever start with a sata drive don't panic if only part is detected during windows install Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Retratserif Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 It makes you load them with the normal auto updates. I just found that out. Pretty cool, and I just foudn out about the hot swap. Makes things realy easy when tweaking. I would go the other way though man. Sate for os/games and IDE ghosting once a week or so. That way you have your fast stuff active and slow stuff incase @#% happens. If you are planning on tweaking, @#% will happen at some point, it never fails me. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.