XP advice - SATA Drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter BH2
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B

BH2

Hi guys,
A bit of advice please. I am going to build a new computer using two WD320
gig HDD's and 1 300Gig IDE Drive. What I would like to know is Will xp
recognise the sata drives, what size partition will it allow me to use. Last
which drive should I use with the OS on it, any advice apprecited. I have
windows XP with Sevice Pack 2
Thanks guys
Regards
Bob
 
Place the OS (Windows) on the fastest drive (most likely the WD SATA) which
I'll call the main drive or Disk 0.

Partitions, here's a subject I'm sure there will be a lot of input on.
Assuming you are not going to do any dual booting I would create at least
two partitions on the main (Disk 0) drive, one for the OS and the other for
data.
Second SATA drive (Drive 1), create the first partition as a relatively
small primary partition (30GB) to use for your pagefile and temp files.
Third drive (PATA/IDE) partition (Drive 2) as needed for storage of Image
backup files and data files.

If you provide more detail on what you intend to use the computer for then
maybe the suggestion above might change somewhat.

JS
 
It makes no difference to Windows whether a hard disk is IDE or SATA.
Click to expand...

I have an experience that led me to believe differently. I loaded XP onto an
IDE drive that had a SATA adapter attached. Works great. Remove the adapter
and try to run the system as an IDE, and XP will not boot.

Last fall I played with this for nearly 30 hours and came to the
'conclusion' that XP was looking for some specific mode or drive type or
something, and switching said mode or type broke the boot process. But,
loading and running XP on either one worked exactly the same, it was the
switch between SATA and IDE that broke XP...obviously an unusual thing that
most of us never need to do.

-John O
 
Provided they are connected to your computer correctly, XP could care less
whether a hard disk uses a parallel connection or a serial connection. In
similar fashion, XP doesn't care whether your printer is attached with a
parallel connection or a USB connection.
 
Any idea why removing a SATA adapter doesn't work? There's not much to be
incorrect with these gizmos, and I tried three different chipsets/mobos and
a different HDD brand with the same results. Seriously, I'd still love to
know the answer because I can quickly demo this with two different SATA
adapter types...Remove the adapter and Windows starts to boot then
BSD/reboot.

-John O
 
I have an experience that led me to believe differently. I loaded XP onto an
IDE drive that had a SATA adapter attached. Works great. Remove the adapter
and try to run the system as an IDE, and XP will not boot.

Last fall I played with this for nearly 30 hours and came to the
'conclusion' that XP was looking for some specific mode or drive type or
something, and switching said mode or type broke the boot process. But,
loading and running XP on either one worked exactly the same, it was the
switch between SATA and IDE that broke XP...obviously an unusual thing that
most of us never need to do.
Click to expand...

Removing a drive could have changed the drive numbering, something XP
has given me fits about in the past.
 
Removing a drive could have changed the drive numbering, something XP
has given me fits about in the past.
Click to expand...

That's a fine guess, but in this case I was working with a single drive,
single partition system. FWIW, this procedure *does* work with 98, but I
never tried 2k.

-John O
 
Hi,
thanks for the information, I intend to use my computer mainly for video
editing, and burning holiday video's to DVD, I have snazzi II video editing
card.
Regards
Bob
 
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