yet another SATA Question

collisster · 8 Nov 2006 at 18:15

I'm wanting to get a nice reliable quick hard drive for around 50 pounds what is the best one for that?
question 2, I'm assuming I dont need sata drivers as I have a sata currently Installed,
question 3, To run the drive as a slave do I just plug it into the slave connection on the cable I'm currently connected to?
question 4, My current maxtor is SATA 1 I think will my mobo support SATA2 aswell ? its an : asus A8n sli premium

rpstewart · 8 Nov 2006 at 18:33

1) Seagate 7200.10 - 200Gb for £45 or 250 for £52 but that's before VAT & delivery

2) You only specifically need a driver floppy when you're installing windows and then usually only if you're installing onto a RAID array.

3) Each SATA port only supports a single device so to add another drive you need to run a cable to it from a free port - your board has at least 4 ports.

4) Yes it supports SATA2.

collisster · 8 Nov 2006 at 18:42

great, so how come one cable has 2 connections?

rpstewart · 8 Nov 2006 at 18:45

That's not a SATA cable. SATA cables are narrow (about 1cm wide) and have a small connector about 1.5cm across at either end. If it has a total of three connectors (one at each end and one in the middle) then it'll be an IDE cable, connector is a wide block about 4-5cm wide with a double row of holes in it.

collisster · 8 Nov 2006 at 18:55

ah right on closer inspection you are right its a small red un for me

so I plug a red cable into the mobo and then into the HDD attach power and then off I go? to i need to fiddle Bios or set any jumper switches?

rpstewart · 8 Nov 2006 at 19:06

It should just be a case of plugging in data and power and away you go, the BIOS should default to having the SATA ports enabled in non RAID mode so Windows should pick everything up OK. The only potential pitfall is remembering to partition and format the drive in the Disk Management tool before worrying about why it's not showing in My Computer.

collisster · 8 Nov 2006 at 22:29

why do I need to partition it in disk management, when I first get it should I do a mega long format or quick ?

rpstewart · 8 Nov 2006 at 22:41

The new drive will arrive totally blank so you'll need to partition it to create the basic structures on the disk (Master Boot Record, Partition Table etc). Now when I say partition I mean just create a partition covering the whole of the disk, there's no need to break it into chunks.

There's nothing wrong with either formatting method, I tend to quick format simply because I'm lazy.

collisster · 8 Nov 2006 at 22:47

so make the 1 big partition,
Is it pretty easy to do and self explanitory as I go along with it?

cheers for the help