Making the switch to SATA

[zha4fh]

Hello everyone.
currnently, i have two IDE hard drives and the asus a78nx deluxe mobo. I am looking to switch to SATA hard drives. I have never installed this type of drive before and i have the following question:

Can i install the SATA drives on my machine and still keep the IDE drives active?? I will not keep the IDE drives installed permenately, I just want to keep them long enough to transfer my data. I have a full 120gb IDE drive and I want to avoid burning all this data to DVD.

I have checked sites like storagereview and cant come up with that "definitive" guide....

thanks for your help in advance.
cheers!!!!!

 

[mrweirdo]

yes you can use both drives toghether or seperate for that matter

 

[nitromullet]

Yes, you can keep the IDE drives installed and active.

Two pieces of advice:

1. Make sure you have a floppy with your SATA drivers on them. You will need to hit F6 when you install windows (XP) to load these drivers or Win will not recognize the SATA hard drive.

2. I unplug my IDE hard drives during windows installation. If you don't do this, windows will not recognize your SATA drives as C:, but rather it will add it to end of the chain ( in my case I: ), which is irritating in my opinion. After you install windows you can reconnect the IDE drives and they will be recognized by windows, but your SATA drives will be your C: drive

You can get your SATA driver here: http://usa.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7N8X%20Deluxe

 

[dartworth]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Yes, you can keep the IDE drives installed and active.

Two pieces of advice:

1. Make sure you have a floppy with your SATA drivers on them. You will need to hit F6 when you install windows (XP) to load these drivers or Win will not recognize the SATA hard drive.

2. I unplug my IDE hard drives during windows installation. If you don't do this, windows will not recognize your SATA drives as C:, but rather it will add it to end of the chain ( in my case I: ), which is irritating in my opinion. After you install windows you can reconnect the IDE drives and they will be recognized by windows, but your SATA drives will be your C: drive

You can get your SATA driver here: http://usa.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7N8X%20Deluxe

good stuff here...thanks

 

[Looney]

I have the same board as you. And you do need to install the SATA drivers when you install XP. The drivers are on the board CD, only catch is, XP won't read the CD drive during this process, so you'll need a floppy, and copy the files over (it's in the driver folder).

 

[zha4fh]

Thanks everyone for the help. I really appreciate it. I am off to order a new hitatchi....


Cheers!!