Serial Ata Question

[ruler]

Hey guys..

I have an Asus P4PE motherboard, and it came with onboard raid and serial ata controllers.

I currently have 2 hd's on my ide0 and 2 cdrs on my ide1. I have a 3rd hd connected to the raid controller (I just use it as if it were an extra ide port).

I gotta buy another hd now, and here's my question: if i get a SATA hd, will I be able to add it up to my current system or will I have to remove something from my ide ports?

Any reply will be highly appreciated, since I never dealed with serial ata drives before.. Thanks!

 

[Shagga]

I believe you can use both IDE and SATA at the same time but not sure about your motherboard. I say this as I have used the IDE and SATA connectors at the same time on my P4C800-E. You can also buy a IDE to SATA adapter so that the standard ATA drive can be used on a SATA connection. If that makes any sense!!

 

[ruler]

thanks for the reply..

it makes a lot of sense to me, if it means I can add two extra HD's to my current setup!

now I just need to know for sure this will really work on my P4PE, since I already have 4 devices on my IDE ports... and are those PATA to SATA adapters 100% functional?

 

[Shagga]

Originally posted by: ruler
... and are those PATA to SATA adapters 100% functional?

I have tried one and there seems to be no difference. The only thing is the adapter requires a seperate power source which is provided by the same 4 pin connector you would use for connecting to a floppy drive, therefore you will need power from the psu to the hard drive and the PATA/SATA adapter.

 

[lordtyranus2]

If you want to set up RAID, you need all IDE or all SATA drives I think. The conversion cable should work, but I don't know if you will get the higher SATA speeds.

But yea, you can have 4 HDD on your SATA.

 

[dfhutch]

I use both sata and eide drives for a total of four harddrives. It is your choice to use raid or not. If not then skip raid setup at boot and go to ( for windows xp (right click )) my computer to manage to disk management and setup drives from there.

 

[ruler]

hmm.

yeah, i don't wanna use raid at all, i just need extra storage.. and since i already have 4 devices on my ides and 1 extra hd on my raid controller, i was afraid connecting yet another hd to the motherboard (to the SATA port this time) could force me to remove one of the other devices..

i mean, i'm not 100% sure that'll work flawlessly, cause i don't even remember an option in the bios for detecting drives connected specifically to the SATA port.

 

[dfhutch]

Just use a sata harddrive and plug it in with sata wire and power supply and away you go. It will not show when you go to my computer but follow my previous reply and it will be under disk management. It's been awhile since I've done this but in your case it should be listed as disk 2 or 3. It will be be listed with a black bar and indicate that it is unallocated right click over disk and activate by clicking on new volume. From here just follow the instructions. Remember to click as a simple drive since the other selections (spanned or striped) are for raid.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: dfhutch
Just use a sata harddrive and plug it in with sata wire and power supply and away you go. It will not show when you go to my computer but follow my previous reply and it will be under disk management. It's been awhile since I've done this but in your case it should be listed as disk 2 or 3. It will be be listed with a black bar and indicate that it is unallocated right click over disk and activate by clicking on new volume. From here just follow the instructions. Remember to click as a simple drive since the other selections (spanned or striped) are for raid.

Yeah, that's right. If it is a new drive, it won't be in my computer (just like a PATA drive) because it hasn't been initialized/formatted yet. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Managment > Storage and format the drive, just like you would a normal ATA drive. It will work fine.

Oh yeah, Serial ATA is hot-swappable too (just like USB and Firewire) so the PC doesn't even need to be off for you to hook up the SATA HD. Just plug that sucker in there and away you go!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024

Originally posted by: dfhutch
Just use a sata harddrive and plug it in with sata wire and power supply and away you go. It will not show when you go to my computer but follow my previous reply and it will be under disk management. It's been awhile since I've done this but in your case it should be listed as disk 2 or 3. It will be be listed with a black bar and indicate that it is unallocated right click over disk and activate by clicking on new volume. From here just follow the instructions. Remember to click as a simple drive since the other selections (spanned or striped) are for raid.

Yeah, that's right. If it is a new drive, it won't be in my computer (just like a PATA drive) because it hasn't been initialized/formatted yet. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Managment > Storage and format the drive, just like you would a normal ATA drive. It will work fine.

Oh yeah, Serial ATA is hot-swappable too (just like USB and Firewire) so the PC doesn't even need to be off for you to hook up the SATA HD. Just plug that sucker in there and away you go!

but don't do that with a RAID!!! even SATA raid is NOT hot pluggable.

 

[jiffylube1024]

^ true.

 

[ruler]

that's great news guys, i have room for 2 extra hds now, for a total of 5!!!

i'll definitely go SATA now. thanks very much for your attention, you were all really helpful