ACHI SATA questions

[Srock]

I am putting together my first machine: Asus P5B, 2 500 GB HD(both are SATA II), sapphire x1950xt, GSkill 800 (2GB), Corsair 520 PS

It booted!!

I now have to set up the bios and have some questions:

I am going to install XP SP2, I have to set up the SATA drives do I enable ACHI or leave it as IDE (I don't want to do RAID). If I do enable ACHI why am I doing it? If I enable it and want to disable it later am I in trouble??

In the old IDE world, the boot drive was identified and setup with the format command - with two SATA drives how do I identify which one is the boot drive and the how do I partition and format each drive?

Any and all help appreciated

Steve

 

[montag451]

Hi,
HDMI is nothing to do with your hard drives - it is for vga/monitor if you have HDMI interface on both your vid card and the monitor.
Just connect up your boot drive, then after you have installed your OS, then plug in the other drives - this keeps things a little simpler.

 

[Srock]

Sorry - too many abbreviation it should read "ACHI" advanced controller host interface



I am putting together my first machine: Asus P5B, 2 500 GB HD(both are SATA II), sapphire x1950xt, GSkill 800 (2GB), Corsair 520 PS

It booted!!

I now have to set up the bios and have some questions:

I am going to install XP SP2, I have to set up the SATA drives do I enable ACHI or leave it as IDE (I don't want to do RAID). If I do enable ACHI why am I doing it? If I enable it and want to disable it later am I in trouble??

In the old IDE world, the boot drive was identified and setup with the format command - with two SATA drives how do I identify which one is the boot drive and the how do I partition and format each drive?

Any and all help appreciated

Steve

 

[PurdueRy]

I have seen fewer problems using IDE mode. AHCI mode adds some SATA features such as hot swap. If they aren't important than I wouldn't bother with it.

 

[Srock]

I might put a drive drawer in down the road so hot swapping might be a help...

What about the SATA boot drive designation - if you have 2 drives to start how do you designate one boot drive and the other data drive?- how do you tell windows to partition it? - Format used to do that (I think it created the Master Boot record at that point

Steve

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Srock
I might put a drive drawer in down the road so hot swapping might be a help...

What about the SATA boot drive designation - if you have 2 drives to start how do you designate one boot drive and the other data drive?- how do you tell windows to partition it? - Format used to do that (I think it created the Master Boot record at that point

Steve

No different than with IDE. You set the boot order in BIOS. Windows partitions the drive in disk management or upon install of windows.

 

[Srock]

Many thanks

Steve