First of all, thanks to everyone here. I just upgraded my PC from an age old Athlon to a nice new E6600, 2gig of RAM and an 8800 
. I did spend several days reading all the posts I could find to help me with my decisions / questions, but it was worth it!
Now the problem. I am running XP Pro and have it installed on my older Seagate Barracuda 120 PATA drive. When I upgraded, I bought a Seagate 400 SATA drive and now have the 120 and a DVD drive on the only PATA connector and the SATA drive on its connector. I just tried to install a copy of Vista 64 on the SATA drive and it seemed to go ok but was VERY noisy. Once installed it continued to be noisy, every time it reads or writes it sounds like there is someone with a geiger counter under my desk! I tried downloading Seatools but it just crashed under Vista before it started properly.
I have gone back to XP on the PATA drive and so far so good, I can't hear the SATA drive (but then the OS is not on it now).
I guess my question is firstly is that amount of noise on a SATA drive normal? And secondly, will there be much of a performance hit if I leave my OS on the PATA drive and use the SATA for program files / storage?
Edit: I have now managed to run Seatools under XP and test the drive and so far there are no problems. Also the drive seems to be quiet when running the tests - Could Vista be responsible for the noise?
. I did spend several days reading all the posts I could find to help me with my decisions / questions, but it was worth it!Now the problem. I am running XP Pro and have it installed on my older Seagate Barracuda 120 PATA drive. When I upgraded, I bought a Seagate 400 SATA drive and now have the 120 and a DVD drive on the only PATA connector and the SATA drive on its connector. I just tried to install a copy of Vista 64 on the SATA drive and it seemed to go ok but was VERY noisy. Once installed it continued to be noisy, every time it reads or writes it sounds like there is someone with a geiger counter under my desk! I tried downloading Seatools but it just crashed under Vista before it started properly.
I have gone back to XP on the PATA drive and so far so good, I can't hear the SATA drive (but then the OS is not on it now).
I guess my question is firstly is that amount of noise on a SATA drive normal? And secondly, will there be much of a performance hit if I leave my OS on the PATA drive and use the SATA for program files / storage?
Edit: I have now managed to run Seatools under XP and test the drive and so far there are no problems. Also the drive seems to be quiet when running the tests - Could Vista be responsible for the noise?
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