Adding an IDE HD to a SATA system

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

After a near brush with computer death, (turned out to be motherboard), all
kinds of nasties run through your mind when you get nothing but black on
boot.

Currently have a serial ATA as only hard drive, and a few old IDE drives
collecting dust that may as well be used for data storage.

Running Win XP home, these old drives are all from W98 boxes, so would be
already formatted, but with FAT.

If I plug it in to the IDE channel, will XP ask if I want to reformat and
partition automatically?

I've never added a hd to an existing XP system, only on new builds
previously, and this box was my first experience with SATA.

Thanks

Mark

--
Four boxes protect our freedom: the soap box, the
ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Dude, just get them in the box, link them up and XP will take care of the
rest. I had a hard drive in a win98 system, the hd was new, it was a western
digital 200gb ide ata100 and once it was on win98 it worked at full capacity
on fat32 for a while then went horibly wrong, now the hd is in xp pro system
and xp formated the hd in NTFC no problem. Do you have IDE connectors on the
m/b? if not you need a converter and you are regulated to the speed of the
drive, if they are that old they are probably ata33 or 66, it might be
better to get a pci ide controller card, maybe the cheaper option.

Shiva


"pheasant" <kiavan02@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:10d5k8oa7roi7df@corp.supernews.com...
> After a near brush with computer death, (turned out to be motherboard),
all
> kinds of nasties run through your mind when you get nothing but black on
> boot.
>
> Currently have a serial ATA as only hard drive, and a few old IDE drives
> collecting dust that may as well be used for data storage.
>
> Running Win XP home, these old drives are all from W98 boxes, so would be
> already formatted, but with FAT.
>
> If I plug it in to the IDE channel, will XP ask if I want to reformat and
> partition automatically?
>
> I've never added a hd to an existing XP system, only on new builds
> previously, and this box was my first experience with SATA.
>
> Thanks
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Four boxes protect our freedom: the soap box, the
> ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 06:25:14 -0500, "pheasant" <kiavan02@yahoo.com> wrote:

>After a near brush with computer death, (turned out to be motherboard), all
>kinds of nasties run through your mind when you get nothing but black on
>boot.
>
>Currently have a serial ATA as only hard drive, and a few old IDE drives
>collecting dust that may as well be used for data storage.

Actually a better use would be to put the older, less reliable drives as
the OS drive, and your more reliable new drive as data storage, assuming
your data is valuable and can't be reproduced by popping in a CD and
running setup like Windows can. It would be slower though, so perhaps
best is to store data on same drive, get a different drive, and backup to
removable media periodically.

>
>Running Win XP home, these old drives are all from W98 boxes, so would be
>already formatted, but with FAT.

Yes, that's exactly what you want. FAT32 that is, can be read by the 2K,
XP, AND W98 boxes, a myriad number of utilties, etc. NTFS is just a PITA
when you need to get at data but don't have another box running NT. If
you DO have another NT box, you have more options.


>If I plug it in to the IDE channel, will XP ask if I want to reformat and
>partition automatically?

Huh?
Why?
Wouldn't that be a PITA if windows constantly asked if you want to
reformat your drives?


>I've never added a hd to an existing XP system, only on new builds
>previously, and this box was my first experience with SATA.


Just plug in the drive, thoroughly check it with the HDD manufacturer's
utilities, and use it.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

pheasant wrote:

> After a near brush with computer death, (turned out to be motherboard), all
> kinds of nasties run through your mind when you get nothing but black on
> boot.
>
> Currently have a serial ATA as only hard drive, and a few old IDE drives
> collecting dust that may as well be used for data storage.
>
> Running Win XP home, these old drives are all from W98 boxes, so would be
> already formatted, but with FAT.
>
> If I plug it in to the IDE channel, will XP ask if I want to reformat and
> partition automatically?
>
> I've never added a hd to an existing XP system, only on new builds
> previously, and this box was my first experience with SATA.
>
> Thanks
>
> Mark
>

If the existing partition and format is still good XP will simply add them
in, assign a drive letter, and they'll be readable as is. If not, it will
add them into the hardware but they'll be invisible till you go into
storage management and partition and format the drives.