Moving from ATA to SATA Help

Presyden · 25 Oct 2006 at 23:25

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 with two IDE hard drives installed. I have bought a WD SATA hard drive and need to install it.

I know that it would have to be my primary drive but I have no idea how I should go about installing it since the drive came with no documentation.

- Do I need to activate the SATA ports before I plag the HD in?
- Do I need to install certain drivers? If yes where do I get them and how do I install them, using a floppy?
- Will the other two drives need to come out of the pc when I install the SATA?
- What happens with the operating system on my old drive? Do I just format it once I reconnect it to the pc?
- Will the PC recognice the old ones once I put them back in?

If you guys have any other tips I would be very grateful.

Presyden

rpstewart · 26 Oct 2006 at 08:33

Presyden said:
I have a Dell Dimension 8300 with two IDE hard drives installed. I have bought a WD SATA hard drive and need to install it.

I know that it would have to be my primary drive but I have no idea how I should go about installing it since the drive came with no documentation.

- Do I need to activate the SATA ports before I plag the HD in?

Maybe, you'll need to check in the BIOS.

- Do I need to install certain drivers? If yes where do I get them and how do I install them, using a floppy?

Unfortunately this is a maybe as well. I would like to think that the SATA ports could support IDE emulation (ie non RAID operation) and hence no driver would be requred during the Windows install. If drivers are required then it's a case of pressing F6 at the start of the install process and putting in the floppy when asked.

- Will the other two drives need to come out of the pc when I install the SATA?

If you're going to reinstall Windows then it's safer to disconnect the other drives while it's installing. Unless there's no physical space for 3 drives they can go back in when Windows is installed.

- What happens with the operating system on my old drive? Do I just format it once I reconnect it to the pc?

Yes, just make sure the machine is booting from the SATA disk first.

- Will the PC recognice the old ones once I put them back in?

Yes

Presyden · 26 Oct 2006 at 12:24

Thanks

I've just downloaded the installation guide from WD's website.
Hopefully that will be helpful.

Presyden

Presyden · 1 Nov 2006 at 18:48

UPDATE:

Installed the drive and it is working. I enabled the Sata port and installed the drivers from Dells website, although I'm not sure if I needed too.

Anyway, the problem I have now is my old hard drives being recognised.

- If all the drives are plugged in they are all recognised.
- If I take out the slave IDE drive the two remaining are recognised.
- If I take out the master IDE drive leaving the slave in with the sata, the slave is not recognised.

I've enabled and disabled them in Bios but no joy. My original plan was to have one sata and the slave IDE because it has more storage. Any ideas?

rpstewart · 2 Nov 2006 at 01:10

If you pull the master IDE drive then you need to set the slave disk as the master device to allow it to be recognised. This is done with a jumper setting on the drive itself, should be a label on it giving details