Installing both an IDE and SATA HD in XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter angel
  • Start date Start date
A

angel

I have an 80 gig IDE HD I am trying to use as a back up.
It was formatted for windows, and will boot windows if set
as the primary drive. My primary drive is a 250 Gig SATA.
Which also has windows installed. I can get one or the
other to work but I can't get either to recognize them both
at the same time. I've tried every jumper and cable
configuration on my board, and I've tried using the CDs,
Downloaded Drivers, and installing through the control
panel of windows. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Hi, Angel.

Have you configured your BIOS properly? You need to enable both SATA and
IDE, and set it to boot from SATA. Each mobo/BIOS is different, so my
settings probably won't apply to your machine, but my owner's manual shows
how to set my computer. Is your SATA controller built in to the mobo, or an
add-on card? Did it come with adequate instructions? My computer has an
onboard RAID controller; I have to enable that controller, then set it as
the first boot device, all in the BIOS.

Have you found Disk Management? This is a built-in utility (a snap-in to
the Microsoft Management Console, the book says) in Windows 2000 and Windows
XP. Many users haven't found it yet, but it is the right tool to use for
managing hard drives and CD/DVD drives. There are several ways to get to
Disk Management. My favorite is to type at the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc

Disk Management can be configured in several ways. I like to set the View
to show the Volume List at the top and the Graphical Display at the bottom.
And the Help file reached from here is more helpful than many others.

With your cables, jumpers, BIOS, etc., set properly, and both HDs installed,
boot into WinXP on SATA. Start Disk Management and see what it tells you
about your IDE drive. Does it see that HD at all? Does it show one or more
partitions on that HD?
Which also has windows installed. I can get one or the
other to work but I can't get either to recognize them both
at the same time.
Click to expand...

Do you mean you can't get it to dual-boot, letting you choose which Windows
installation to run each time you reboot? That's probably easy to fix, but
I won't get into it unless that is what you want to do. "One or the other"
WHAT? Drive? Or Windows?

RC
 
angel said:
I have an 80 gig IDE HD I am trying to use as a back up.
It was formatted for windows, and will boot windows if set
as the primary drive. My primary drive is a 250 Gig SATA.
Which also has windows installed. I can get one or the
other to work but I can't get either to recognize them both
at the same time. I've tried every jumper and cable
configuration on my board, and I've tried using the CDs,
Downloaded Drivers, and installing through the control
panel of windows. Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

I would advise against it - you will notice a serious degradation in
performance as the IDE will be a severe system bottleneck.
 
Miss Perspicacia Tick said:
I would advise against it - you will notice a serious degradation in
performance as the IDE will be a severe system bottleneck.
Click to expand...

If the drive is used only as a backup, and is essentially idle except when
in active use for copying files, it will do nothing to system performance.
Also, depending on BIOS, the drive can be set to spin down after a
certain time (e.g., 3 hours), and the unused IDE HD will not spin up with
the system SATA drive. The only exception I've found so far on my system is
that emptying the Recycle Bin will also poll the idle drive.
 
Back
Top