Multiple hard drive question- help me please!

jay autopsy · 27 Aug 2006 at 22:35

A quick question if any of you wise posters have time?
A few months ago the motherboard on my main pc went, i had a second pc running windows xp on an ata drive so i pulled the ata hard drive out of the broken pc and added it to the other computer. The second drive worked fine and i could access all my files.
Since then i have built a new pc again running windows xp but this time on a sata drive. Will there be any issues i need to watch out for when i connect the old ata drive to the new system? The motherboard has connection points for the older ata connection and i intend to set the boot order in bios with the ata drive im adding at the bottom of the list i.e floppy, optical, sata, ata- Is there anything else i need to worry about? Sorry if this is basic stuff im an ultra paranoid beginer?

The motherboard i am using is the gigabyte GA-8I945G with a western digital 160gb sata hard drive and a 120 gb ata western digital drive (to be added- hopefully)

thanks in advance

FatRakoon · 27 Aug 2006 at 22:46

Nah, you will be fine.

Windows and indeed the motherboard wont care what you boot with... Not really!

Just make sure that the BOOT order is how you want it.

Older Motherboards need the right SATA Driver installed at install-time, newer ones dont, or at least most dont.

Other that that, you will be fine.

Only issue I get sometimes, is that I might install and boot from a drive on one device, IDE or SATA, it rarely makes any difference, and when I add another drive to another device, the Disk Manager in Windows often sees the other devices first, so that my drives might show up in odd-orders.

Like this:-

D: - E: - C: - F:

So, its often a good idea to make sure you have all your drivers for the device you are booting from installed first, and then add the second / third device afterwards, so they come out in the right order.

This by the way does not affect a thing... Its just me being silly.

I get this because I have drives on IDE, SATA on the Mobo, and an extra IDE or SATA Card for even more HDs... On both my main PCS then, I am running off 3 different controlers.
Like I said, its nothign to worry about. Just set the order of the Drives you wish to boot from and thats it! - You can set drive letters etc in Windows because the boot drive will always be C: ( Well, it should be C: )

jay autopsy · 28 Aug 2006 at 00:28

thanks for the quick response, realy appreciated- just to clarrifie i already have the new system up and running with xp installed on the sata so all i need to do now is connect the old ata drive and my computer will see it as an extra drive like e or f? is that all i need to do?

McDaniel · 28 Aug 2006 at 00:35

jay autopsy said:
thanks for the quick response, realy appreciated- just to clarrifie i already have the new system up and running with xp installed on the sata so all i need to do now is connect the old ata drive and my computer will see it as an extra drive like e or f? is that all i need to do?

Yup;

The BIOS on your computer will have an option for HDD Boot order aswell - but it should just add it as a new drive.

Once in Windows if you right click on "My Computer" goto Manage Drives - you can change the Drive letters, so if your SATA C:, CD Drive D: new HDD E: you can change the D and E around... if you wanted

FatRakoon · 28 Aug 2006 at 04:37

Yeah, one thing that I dont like, is that most users have C: as the HD and D: as a CDROM ( Or DVD etc ) and then another HD maybe as E:

Utterly thick if oyu ask me ( Which you're not, but there you go )

I have on all my systems, setup my HDs in a very logical and sensible order... Or at least I think so!

C: = Windows, System Apps but nothing else
D: = Apps, games
E: = Media
F: = Junk

At this time, I have used an 80GB for C

n my 2 main PCs , so thats now setup as an 8GB for C: and 70GB as T: for TEMP, on this T: I have my ISOs for the games etc

My CD/DVD Drives are setup similarly:-

R: = DVDRW
V: = DVDRW
W: = CDRW

Virtual Drivers are setup X:, Y: Z:

My FlashDrives are also done in a similar way

B: is the Buffalo Disk
V: is the Verbatim
P: and Q: is my Pokki MP3 Player ( Its own RAM, plus the SD Card for it too )

Anyway...

Just plonk the Drive in!

There may be a chance, that because the Mobo will see a new HD, oyur BootDisk order might change, so just go straight into the BIOS and make sure that its still set to boot from the SATA and you will be fine!

FrankJH · 28 Aug 2006 at 10:22

Actually most programs prefer having the DVD drive as D - if you only have one optical drive ( not many reasons to have more) why not have it as D?

It doesnt actually make much difference, but as optical drive is installed into Windows as D automatically why change? Then have whatever other hdd partitions or whatever afterwards

Sure if you have to have an old magazine style optical drive that holds many discs, or a use for multiple drives then it makes sense to have them all together - but with one nahh

Also be aware that if you have memory card readers connected on your system when you are installing windows - this can mess up the name of your boot drive (as lets say a 3 slot card reader) will potentially reserve c,d and e and your boot drive will end up as F - even though its the first fixed hdd.

I noticed this with the internal card reader when using My shuttle for the first time - went thru the whole windows install again to get it right but still frustrating.

FatRakoon · 28 Aug 2006 at 12:19

Yes, Usually, if you have one partition, thats C: then your CD / DVD if you had one will usually be D:, of course it would.

The installation source would have course then be D: and so if/when it asks for the Windows installation disk, it will look on D: for it first.

I myself have half a dozen drives, a couple of them have more than one partition, and I have 3 Writers, so on 2 of my PCs, the installation drive is H:

I just copy my I386 folder to C: and set the source to C: instead, so I never get asked for the CD and it just grabs what it needs when it needs it.

The reasons wo have more than one disk may not be obvious, but I myself have a load of DVD Movies and some are different regions... That alone allows me to have one drive as UK, another as US so if the disk dont work in one, it will work in the other.

I also like to be able to burn to a disk and read a disk at the same time... Thankfully I can burn 2 and read another too, and this would be 3+1 but I removed the drive last week.

Also of course, if one drive fails, which they often do these days, then I wont be without... If I had one drive, then unless I got one lying on the side spare, I will be stuffed.