PATA slave in a SATA system?

C

cliffracer

New Member
I have an old 80GB PATA hd that I want to put into my SATA system, but I have a few problems. The hd is formatted with an old OS and I just want to delete it but I am not sure how to. Also, I know that there are PATA to SATA converters, but I am not sure how I could set it up so that it would act like the slave to my other hd. AFAIK SATA hard drives can't be set up as master and slave, so I'm not sure how I would go about doing this.
 
Do you have any free IDE/PATA ports open on your motherboard?

If "yes", then all you need to do is connect the PATA drive on an unused IDE ribbon cable connector. Make sure the PATA hard drive jumper is set to Cable Select. You may have to check your BIOS to make sure your IDE controller is turned on, and make sure the comp boots from the SATA drive where your OS is located.

Boot into Windows and go into Administrative Tools -> Disk management. Pick a drive letter for the freshly installed PATA drive then right-click it and choose "Format". Presto. A clean, ready-to-fill PATA storage drive. :)
 
Don't get the converters. They are junk. If you must get anything, get an IDE controller (though I assume you have spare IDE connectors...?) If you do have the connectors, just set the jumper, slap the drive in and you're good to go. I've actually got an IDE drive in my i7 machine.
 
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