SATA HDD question

[Celticsfan]

I know SCSI hard drives when you have more than 1 you have to set one as the master and one to slave. What about when you have 2 SATA drives is such a thing needed to done or do you just plug each one into the mobo and you are ready to go?


Please let me know.

thx

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Yup, you just plug them in and off you go. The only thing you need to worry about is setting the drive with the OS as the first one in the boot order.

 

[eyeCpc]

SCSI drives can be run one at a time since you are using a separate controller card for that type. Having two drives in array usually referred to as RAID can see one partition mirrored or extended onto the second drive.

For installing sata drives there are two types being Sata I as well as the Sata II now widely used. The older Sata I type saw a jumper for setting the particular mode generally left at default for desktops.

Instead of setting a jumper to master, slave, or cable select depending which connector on the ide cable was used the port on the board itself determines primary master or slave for the first two ports. Secondary master or slave for the one or more pairs to follow.

 

[Celticsfan]

Yup, you just plug them in and off you go. The only thing you need to worry about is setting the drive with the OS as the first one in the boot order.

Thx AR, What if I want to have a different OS on each HD. I might have WIN 7 on one and an already installed XP on another.

I appreciated the help from both of you.

thx

 

[eyeCpc]

If you want to setup a dual boot that can be done easy enough. Leave one drive unplugged while installing one version on the other then reverse with that one unplugged so each is bootable on it's own.

Once both versions XP, 7 or Vista whichever are on you edit the 7/Vista boot loader to add XP in there. First you have to unhide XP's boot files and copy those over to the C:\ directory on the other then edit the boot.ini(copy) to make a small change like rdisk(0)partition(1) to rdisk(1)partion(1) since XP would be seen on the second drive.

To see the new XP entry added into the 7 or Vista boot loader you can manually use the BCD edit tool included in the newer versions or grab a free tool for that at http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

With 7 on the second partition here with XP on the first I had to go into the Disk Management tool to see XP(boot) given a drive letter so you could access that partition from 7.