Help With SATA

  • Thread starter Thread starter jim evans
  • Start date Start date
J

jim evans

I just installed a new motherboard. To my dismay, current motherboards
only come with one IDE (PATA) port, and I currently have 4 IDE drives.
I'm converting my backup drive to USB using a external enclosure --
that takes care of one. My DVD burner is a little long in the tooth so
I'm considering buying a new SATA version.

My previous motherboard supported SATA and I tried once to get one
working and gave up -- it screwed up everything and the system thought
it was a SCSI.

The motherboard manual devotes between one sentence and one paragraph
to every other feature of the board. But, it devotes 10 pages to SATA.
Gosh, I don't want to spend two days becoming a master of these
drives, I just want to install one. But, they must be a nightmare to
install and get working if it takes that much explanation.

I want to keep my two IDE drives as prime and secondary for now. Is
there a link/webpage somewhere that explains in two hundred words or
less what I have to do to add one SATA drive without messing up the
other drives?

Thanks.
 
If the motherboard is set to IDE mode for SATA instead of AHCI mode then
you can probably just hook up SATA drives and use them without any
special drivers other than the motherboard's normal ones.

For AHCI and RAID you have to install special drivers, and if you're
installing a clean install of Windows on a SATA then you'd have to have
the drivers on a floppy for Windows to absorb.

If you're not going to be hot plugging IDE mode should be ok.

Caveat: I'm not a total expert on that.
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jim evans said:
I just installed a new motherboard. To my dismay, current motherboards
only come with one IDE (PATA) port, and I currently have 4 IDE drives.
I'm converting my backup drive to USB using a external enclosure --
that takes care of one. My DVD burner is a little long in the tooth so
I'm considering buying a new SATA version.
Click to expand...
My previous motherboard supported SATA and I tried
once to get one working and gave up -- it screwed up
everything and the system thought it was a SCSI.
Click to expand...

Things have improved considerably since then.
The motherboard manual devotes between one sentence and one
paragraph to every other feature of the board. But, it devotes 10
pages to SATA. Gosh, I don't want to spend two days becoming
a master of these drives, I just want to install one. But, they must be
a nightmare to install and get working if it takes that much explanation.
Click to expand...

Not really. There is quite a bit of extra capability now.

Quite a few motherboards have more than one sata controller and the
bulk of them allow various raid configs and that takes some documenting.
I want to keep my two IDE drives as prime and secondary for now. Is there
a link/webpage somewhere that explains in two hundred words or less what
I have to do to add one SATA drive without messing up the other drives?
Click to expand...

Not possible given that the detail of how the motherboard implement sata varys so much.

You could try putting the primary and secondary IDE drives on
the only IDE controller and see if that will boot. It should do.

Then set the sata drives to IDE compat in the bios if you can do that and the sata
drives should show up the way you expect IDE drives to show up when you add those.

You may have to fiddle with the boot order to boot from the primary IDE after adding sata drives.
 
Quite a few motherboards have more than one sata controller and the
bulk of them allow various raid configs and that takes some documenting.
Click to expand...

Yes, mine provides for several SATA drives.
Not possible given that the detail of how the motherboard implement sata varys so much.
Click to expand...

That means to me it ain't as easy as IDEs are(were?).
You could try putting the primary and secondary IDE drives on
the only IDE controller and see if that will boot. It should do.
Click to expand...

I'd already done that and it works fine, except the BIOS stops and
complains about it every time I boot. It wants me to click something
that changes the SATA drives (which I don't yet have) to something.
Then set the sata drives to IDE compat in the bios if you can do that and the sata
drives should show up the way you expect IDE drives to show up when you add those.

You may have to fiddle with the boot order to boot from the primary IDE after adding sata drives.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
Yes, mine provides for several SATA drives.
Click to expand...
That means to me it ain't as easy as IDEs are(were?).
Click to expand...

Depends on what you want to do. Quite a few do now default to configs
that do allow you to operate like you used to with IDE drives and you
only need to do anything different if you want to implement a RAID config.
I'd already done that and it works fine, except the BIOS stops and
complains about it every time I boot. It wants me to click something
that changes the SATA drives (which I don't yet have) to something.
Click to expand...

Thats likely just that IDE compat I mentioned next. If not, post
the text of what it says and the motherboard model number.
 
Previously jim evans said:
I just installed a new motherboard. To my dismay, current motherboards
only come with one IDE (PATA) port, and I currently have 4 IDE drives.
I'm converting my backup drive to USB using a external enclosure --
that takes care of one. My DVD burner is a little long in the tooth so
I'm considering buying a new SATA version.
Click to expand...
My previous motherboard supported SATA and I tried once to get one
working and gave up -- it screwed up everything and the system thought
it was a SCSI.
Click to expand...

Which it is, on the command side.
The motherboard manual devotes between one sentence and one paragraph
to every other feature of the board. But, it devotes 10 pages to SATA.
Gosh, I don't want to spend two days becoming a master of these
drives, I just want to install one. But, they must be a nightmare to
install and get working if it takes that much explanation.
Click to expand...

Unles your OS is completely screwed up, it is typicallyplug and play.
Windows may show SATA drives as removable drives. You can adjust that
manually, if you do not want to remove them, but you do not need to.
I want to keep my two IDE drives as prime and secondary for now. Is
there a link/webpage somewhere that explains in two hundred words or
less what I have to do to add one SATA drive without messing up the
other drives?
Click to expand...

Tell the BIOS to boot from the first IDE drive. For that, add them
all (pratitioning of the SATA not needed), then go into the
BIOS configuration during bootup and set the boot drive. How
to do that in detail depends on the BIOS but should not be hard.

Arno
 
Now that doesn't help. Not all the world is tough.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that anybody able to read the (S)ATA
specification will find it uses the SCSI command set
for storage and that is the reason an SATA HDD typically
shows up as SCSI drive, unless some translation is done.

Quite elementary and widely known. I guess Eric is not
well informed and in addition cannot really read. Not
surprising.

Arno
 
Arno Wagner said:
The funny thing is that anybody able to read the (S)ATA
specification will find it uses the SCSI command set for storage
Nope.

and that is the reason an SATA HDD typically shows
up as SCSI drive, unless some translation is done.
Click to expand...

Wrong again. The real reason is that many bios label any biosed controller as scsi.
Quite elementary and widely known.
Click to expand...

And just plain wrong.
I guess Eric is not well informed and in addition cannot really read.
Click to expand...

You in spades.
Not surprising.
Click to expand...

With you in spades.
 
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