Hard drives: SATA/IDE mixture?

Laguna

Howdy all, simple question coming from a simple person here .

Right, I'm going to pick up a 74gb Raptor SATA HDD in the next couple of days because I want to join the 10,000rpm brigade (finally)!, the thing is I already have my standard IDE 120gb HDD sitting in my computer. Now, my question is (because I've never mixed SATA and IDE), is it possible for me to have both SATA and IDE drives in tandem in my system without it being overly complicated to set up?, do I just literally chuck in the SATA drive alongside the IDE one, set it to slave (like I would if I was putting in an additional IDE) and Bob is your transvestite cousin or is there slightly more to it than that?.

I know this is a pretty pathetic question, but in my years of building PC's and adding/replacing hardware, I've honestly never mixed different HDD types before!. Thanks!

weeder

my guess is have the sata drive on master as well as the ide one since there on different channels same as with ide a nd 4 disks 2 masters and 2 slaves but its only a guess ive never done sata

SeanW

SATA and IDE are two completely different ballgames. However your mainboard should run both concurrently without problems.

By the way there's no master and slave business with SATA, each SATA device uses its own SATA port on the mainboard, and uses one small cable to make the connection.

So it should be a case of just plug it in and go.

Edit: are you planning to leave the OS on the IDE drive and use the SATA for virtual memory and storage? because that will make things a LOT simpler.

Ruu_Old

Its not hard to do but what SeanW said makes the most sense, leave the OS on the IDE.

SATA drive cable


IDE drive cable

aFlabbyPanda

whats the point in getting a 10K raptor if he's still running the OS from a 5400RPM IDE? I agree its the easier option but not the best.

if it was me I'd get someone to sort moving the OS (or just do a new install) on to the raptor and use the IDE just for storage.

djmarkus

A ghost might work, but its not guaranteed, you could just instal fresh on the new raptor

jozi

I know its more hasle but would it not make sense to install your OS to the raptor?
Maybe you can get away with installing sata drivers and cloning 1 disk image to the other?

EDIT: should have hit refresh before posting

zuma

Put the OS on the Raptor ASAP!

My main PC has 4 x 300GB HDD's and I use 2 Optical Drives on the Primary IDE with 2 HDD's on the Secondary IDE as well as 2 SATA HDD's and have absolutely no problems with it.

Khannie

One more vote for the OS on the raptor.

bretttp1

You should have no problems, I'm running my os off an IDE drive and using a maxtor 300 gig SATA for storage.

The only reason that I'm running the OS off the IDE is cause I had hastle with the sata on start up, it would only be detected on hard start.

So your set up will be OK.:)

SeanW

similar story here, have a 300GB SATA Maxtor but, running OS off an 80 GB IDE HD (smaller than the OPs and likely slower)

It's plenty fast, OS boots up in about 10 seconds and I can never detect any slowdown related to the IDE HD. There's no urgent need to move the OS to the new drive - though it's definately something to think about when you get more familiar/comfortable with SATA and SATA/IDE mixes.