Need confirmation on SATA vs. IDE

pdlstl

New Member
Hi,

My current (old) computer is a:

P4 3Ghz.
1 GB Ram
XP Home

I have a small app drive, 40 Gb, Drive C. I believe this is an IDE.
I have another interal drive, 180 Gb, Drive D. I believe this is an IDE as well.

My app drive only has about 3 Gb free space reamaining. I found a good deal on a Seagate SATA drive which I would like to install and then ghost Drive C on to the new drive using Acronis.

I'm wondering if the SATA and IDE can coexist in the same box? Also, is there anything special I need to know/do upon installation provided they can coexist?

Thanks,

Earl
 
yeah sata and ide can work together just as long as your not trying to run raid or anything (at least i dont think you can run raid with one ide and one sata). just make sure your motherboard has sata ports as sata wasnt introduced until 2003 and most older motherboards dont have it.
 
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You will also need to perform a clean install of Windows on the new sata if you can use it. Ghosting from an ide to sata drive won't work. The Windows hardware profiling as well as the change in the type of drive play a large role there.

I ran two ide drives along with two satas in one case for multibooting and storage as well. When going to install Windows on a sata drive make sure you unplug any ide hard drives first since the installer looks for the ide over sata by default. Otherwise your boot files and mbr entries are placed on the first ide drive and will shift C to another drive letter like E for Windows.
 
One other thing to add will be seeing Windows finish instaling and booting up normally once you perform a clean install on the new drive. You will have to go into the bios for setting that drive as the default usually moved to the top of a list of hard drives installed. Integrated Peripherals or Onboard configuration are the usual sections to look while referring to the manual.
 
In some bioses, you can set the sata controller to be compatible with ata, then you can ghost without worring about sata drivers.

By doing some initial system preparement, you can also do it without the ata-emulation. There are some guides out on the big internet that walks you through it.
 
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