Advice needed: SATA v IDE

Ardent

Installed a new motherboard last night but it only has one IDE interface. Bit of a problem because I have two IDE hard drives and a DVD drive with an IDE interface. The board does however have 4 SATA interfaces.

Two questions for those who might know:

1) Is there such a thing as a SATA to IDE converter which would allow me to hook up my existing drives? I'd prefer not to have to buy a new drive...

2) If I do buy a SATA drive, is there a problem with installing Windows XP on SATA drives, been reading stories about third party drivers being needed?

seamus

Ardent wrote:

1) Is there such a thing as a SATA to IDE converter which would allow me to hook up my existing drives? I'd prefer not to have to buy a new drive...

Yes. Google.

2) If I do buy a SATA drive, is there a problem with installing Windows XP on SATA drives, been reading stories about third party drivers being needed?

At the very beginning of the XP install, you are prompted to press F5(?) to install third-party RAID drivers. At this point, you hit F5 and stick in a floppy with the drivers when prompted. Your SATA motherboard should have come with a floppy with the drivers. If not, you'll need to get one. You can't load the drivers from a CD.

BobTheBeat

1) you'd be lookin at one of these puppies for conversion to SATA http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118375&cks=SER cheap enough!
You can also get 'bridge boards' but haven't seen any in shops.

2)XP is not SATA compatible out of the box, you will have to use a driver. Your new mother board should have come with a RAID installation disk. This is what XP needs to be able to see a SATA drive

jor el

You can get IDE-SATA convertors which will allow you to connect an IDE device to the SATA controller. However, most of these are specific to a particluar SATA chipset (such as Sunsway or Highpoint etc). I have one that I got from komplett but it doesn't work on my motherboard. This is something that they don't state on Komplett, and I only found out after buying it.

There can be issues with Windows being installed on an SATA disk, but I think as long as you use an SP2 installation it should be OK.

What kind of crap motherbaord only has one IDe connector? IDE isn't dead yet and they're already phasing it out!

BobTheBeat

dagit seamus,straight in there!

jor el

bobmeaney wrote:

1) you'd be lookin at one of these puppies for conversion to SATA http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=118375&cks=SER cheap enough!

Ah, that's the one I have. What it doesn't say on there is that it only works with one particular SATA chipset. Can't remember which one but if you look at the manufacturers page it will tell you.

dalk

Its really annoying that you have to use a feckin floppy for the sata drivers....

Why not a cd or usb key or anything other than floppies Microsoft?

Kill floppies for gods sake! For a while i thought, thats it, for a normal pc build i never have to use a floppy again. That was until sata began appearing...

WizZard

You don't always *have* to use a floppy if you are not using SATA RAID. Some newer BIOSs can show single SATA drives to the OS as IDE based devices, negating the need for a driver disk during installs.

USB floppy drives are handy for SATA RAID installs

art

Ardent wrote:

Installed a new motherboard last night but it only has one IDE interface. Bit of a problem because I have two IDE hard drives and a DVD drive with an IDE interface. The board does however have 4 SATA interfaces.

Two questions for those who might know:

1) Is there such a thing as a SATA to IDE converter which would allow me to hook up my existing drives? I'd prefer not to have to buy a new drive...

2) If I do buy a SATA drive, is there a problem with installing Windows XP on SATA drives, been reading stories about third party drivers being needed?

I bought a SeaGate SATA drive - little while ago now so maybe I'm forgetting something but it was all very painless whatever I did: think I just set the HD up (on boot up) using a supplied floppy from SeaGate and then copied the contents of my old IDE drive onto the new SATA (again using the software supplied by SeaGate) and off I went, no problems, booting into WinXP since just using that SATA drive etc.

dalk

You don't always *have* to use a floppy if you are not using SATA RAID. Some newer BIOSs can show single SATA drives to the OS as IDE based devices, negating the need for a driver disk during installs.

Yeah, a new PC i built did just that, which i thought was cool, but mentioning it would have blunted my rant :rolleyes:

Its just that i have a floppy drive that must be at least 12 years old and in the fast paced ever changing world of IT, using something that old is just plain wrong

The Troll

Sorry about the hijacking here, but i just formatted my SATA hard drives. Do i need to install RAID drivers when reinstalling XP? I've a dell 8400.

astrofool

Vista supports loading drivers from CD/DVD. Can't remember if it supports flash drives as well.

It depends on the manufacturer's implementation of SATA, as it is 100% backwards compatable with PATA. Nvidia and Intel boards implement it as on board controllers, so don't need a driver, unless its in RAID (all RAID implementations need a driver, even older PATA raid).

Via used to implement it so you needed a driver, they may have changed this tho (anyone know?). Additional Highpoint/SIS SATA ports do need a driver, but then, even if they were additional PATA ports, they would still need a driver.

A big problem seems to be that motherboard BIOS's set SATA using RAID by default, when they should be standard IDE by default, and RAID only when someone sets them that way.

irlrobins

The Troll wrote:

Sorry about the hijacking here, but i just formatted my SATA hard drives. Do i need to install RAID drivers when reinstalling XP? I've a dell 8400.

I got a 8400 in Jan. First thing it did was to fdisk the HD and repartition it. Installed XP from CD no probs. Just as well as I have no floppy drive!

I think the Dell OS disk has the drivers included.

The Troll

irlrobins wrote:

I got a 8400 in Jan. First thing it did was to fdisk the HD and repartition it. Installed XP from CD no probs. Just as well as I have no floppy drive!

I think the Dell OS disk has the drivers included.

Thanks for that.

Ardent

Thanks for the replies guys.

No floppy supplied with the motherboard but I think from reading the manufacturer's website, the supplied CD will generate the SATA driver floppy. And thankfully I have a floppy drive lying around somewhere!

I'll see if I can pick up a couple of SATA->IDE adapters somewhere in town later.

(Looking at a few mainboards on Komplett, the norm seems to be only 1 IDE controller interface!)