Are there issues with using a SATA hd as the boot drive?

[Siddhartha]

My boot drive is going bad. I am thinking about getting a SATA hard drive to replace it. Are there any problems with this? Any reasons I should stick with using an IDE drive?

Thanks

I replaced the boot drive with an IDE drive this did not really fix the problem. It turned out that the motherboard, according to ASUS tech support, needs to be replaced.

I thank everyone who responsed to this thread.

 

[oynaz]

A had a bit of trouble setting it up in the BIOS, but apart from that has not had any troubles.

 

[ShawnD1]

oynaz is right about needing to set it in the BIOS.

My computer first started with just a SATA drive, and it worked fine. I then moved 5 IDE drives into the computer to make this the new server (the motherboard has 3 IDE slots, the DVD drive occupies the first IDE master). When I did that I couldn't figure out why the hell the computer wouldn't boot; kept saying it didn't have a valid boot disk. I had to go into the BIOS options and manually tell it which of the 6 hard drives it's supposed to boot from.
After changing the BIOS settings, this computer works fine. The boot drive is SATA, the other 5 IDE drives are for random storage.

To answer your question: SATA is better. Not because it's faster, but because the cables are much smaller. Have you tried to work on a computer that has 6 IDE drives? It's horrible!
Another thing to consider is that SATA drives are getting much bigger and cheaper while IDE drives are basically at the end of their cycle. If you use up your IDE slots now, that leaves the SATA slots available for huge expansion when the time comes to get more hard drive space. If you use up your SATA slots, you can only upgrade with IDE drives in the future, or replace your existing SATA drives. It's sort of like asking whether you should buy 2x512mb memory sticks or 1x1gb; buying 2 sticks (like SATA) is faster, but leaving more slots open (using the IDE before SATA) allows more room for expansion in the future.

 

[conlan]

Originally posted by: Siddhartha
My boot drive is going bad. I am thinking about getting a SATA hard drive to replace it. Are there any problems with this? Any reasons I should stick with using an IDE drive?

Thanks

No problems. When replacing/installing a boot drive on an existing system, i'll just disconnect all existing HDDs, install/setup the new boot drive, then reconnect all drives, then go into the BIOS to make sure it's setup correctly. You don't have to do it this way, i've just found it's the easiest and safest way for me.

 

[Markbnj]

I didn't have to set up anything in the BIOS to boot off a SATA drive. I installed Windows XP to the Raptor and it just worked.

 

[chizow]

If you don't have SP1/SP2 slipstreamed, you may want to enable "Large" HDD for your boot drive in the BIOS if its larger than 120GB. I kept getting "Error initializing Operating System" until I made this change. Funny thing is it only occurred with one of my Raptors and not the other.

 

[Jiggz]

Just make sure the one hdd is the SATA until you've completed windows installation.

 

[dakels]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

To answer your question: SATA is better. Not because it's faster, but because the cables are much smaller. Have you tried to work on a computer that has 6 IDE drives? It's horrible!
Another thing to consider is that SATA drives are getting much bigger and cheaper while IDE drives are basically at the end of their cycle. If you use up your IDE slots now, that leaves the SATA slots available for huge expansion when the time comes to get more hard drive space. If you use up your SATA slots, you can only upgrade with IDE drives in the future, or replace your existing SATA drives. It's sort of like asking whether you should buy 2x512mb memory sticks or 1x1gb; buying 2 sticks (like SATA) is faster, but leaving more slots open (using the IDE before SATA) allows more room for expansion in the future.

SATA is definitely better on the air circulation but faster is sort of a misnomer. SATA bandwith is usually slightly higher then most ATA busses, but the drives still don't really use that bandwidth. The fastest SATA or PATA drives usually go about 45-55mb/sec last I checked. Not nearly enough to saturate a 100-133mb/sec ATA or 150mb/sec SATA bus on any frequent basis. Still though, the benefit of SATA is a clear winner now that it no longer costs more then PATA/IDE.

 

[MazerRackham]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
Just make sure the one hdd is the SATA until you've completed windows installation.

This is what I did and I've had no problems using a SATA drive as the boot. I love the SATA cables... keeps the inside of my case nice and clean looking.

 

[webley]

This is sort of an offshoot question of the main thread question but can one use the normal DOS Fdisk and Format to FAT32 using a floppy so that XP can be installed starting under DOS? That's how some PATA drives used to be made into boot drives and I wondered if there are any problems doing this with modern SATA.. Also, with a modern, SATA 2 motherboard, should it auto-detect the SATA Drive so it can be formatted and partitioned just like a PATA? The Seagate Seatools gave me a problem once of not offering FAT32 formatting, only NTFS that I thought was strange. TIA.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
I didn't have to set up anything in the BIOS to boot off a SATA drive. I installed Windows XP to the Raptor and it just worked.

This is due to the way the mobo handles the drives.

 

[Zepper]

Not here. SATA boot, two SCSIs for data, opticals on PATA ports.

.bh.

 

[piasabird]

It can make a difference which SATA port you plug into. Some motherboards had different controllers for different SATA ports. Some motherboards want the boot device on a specific SATA Connector.

 

[Matt1970]

Originally posted by: dakels

SATA is definitely better on the air circulation but faster is sort of a misnomer. SATA bandwith is usually slightly higher then most ATA busses, but the drives still don't really use that bandwidth. The fastest SATA or PATA drives usually go about 45-55mb/sec last I checked. Not nearly enough to saturate a 100-133mb/sec ATA or 150mb/sec SATA bus on any frequent basis. Still though, the benefit of SATA is a clear winner now that it no longer costs more then PATA/IDE.

It really depends on how data is arranged on the drive as to how a drive will perform on a transfer test, as well as seek times, but PATA capability would Max out at 133mbps where as first generation SATA is capable of 150mbps.

 

[dbal]

Originally posted by: Siddhartha
My boot drive is going bad. I am thinking about getting a SATA hard drive to replace it.

I have the same situation here and been reading a lot about SATA and the lack of native support in Windows XP even with SP2 but all "googling" refers to the case of a clean install on a SATA drive (pressing F6 for loading the drivers from a floppy etc.)
How about the right procedure steps when just REPLACING your Windows up and running IDE drive?
In my device manager, after enabling the two built-in SATA ports of my 865PE chipset mobo, I have one more IDE Ultra ATA controller appearing with two channels (Primary and secondary). During the installation, I pointed the driver to the XP folder of the latest 8.11 chipset software installation from Intel. The readme file claims that configures the ICH5 for SATA storage support
So, am I really ready to shut down and plug in the new drive? What are the steps from now on? Sorry for being a little anxious but I have to be absolutely ready for the RaptorX arrival...!

 

[AliasX]

Shouldn't be any problems. I have done this with ease many times.

 

[dbal]

Nice teaser post. If you could spend a little extra time to describe the next steps of that easy procedure....

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: MazerRackham

Originally posted by: Jiggz
Just make sure the one hdd is the SATA until you've completed windows installation.

This is what I did and I've had no problems using a SATA drive as the boot. I love the SATA cables... keeps the inside of my case nice and clean looking.

Same here.