can you have an IDE as a master HDD and a sata as a slave?

[Chris Martin]

hey guys sorry to keep pestering you all so much, but i have an IDE master hasrd drive and bought a sata to be a secondary but when i install it and boot it up i get an error message on the boot screen, error loading operatiing system, any ideas?

 

[alexoiu]

There is no master or slave options for SATA.
What is the boot order in BIOS?

 

[Chris Martin]

as far as i know it CD-ROM, HDD, and HDD again

 

[USAFRet]

1. Why do you want/need to use an old, slow IDE drive as the primary?
2. How is that IDE drive connected?
3. In the BIOS, can you designate that IDE drive as first in boot order?

 

[casper1973]

There is no such thing as Master/Slave drives with SATA.

The reason we had this with IDE is because 2 or more drives were shared across one channel. With SATA it is one drive, one cable, one port.

You problem is probably the boot order in your BIOS. If the OS is installed on your IDE drive make sure it comes before the SATA drive in the boot order.

 

[USAFRet]

as far as i know it CD-ROM, HDD, and HDD again

Which HDD and HDD?

 

[Chris Martin]

casper1973 how would i go about changing the order? i thought i did it properly but apparently not

 

[Shaun o]

It will depend on the boot order of devices.
More than likely snice you fitted the sata drive.
It is listed as number one in the bios boot list.

In the boot order list just simply make sure it is above the sata drive.


eg:

1.Cd/DvD rom.
2. Ide drive.
3. Sata HD.

 

[photonboy]

As per Shaun,
You often have the Boot Order split (not always).

First, you choose what GENERAL order. I don't know if it will show IDE or SATA, it may simply show HARD DRIVE. So you might end up choosing:

1. DVD
2. Hard Drive
3. Nothing

Then, under order for "Hard Drives" you might see both your IDE and SATA drives listed. Again, it depends on the BIOS how this information is presented.

So you choose whichever drive you intend to boot from.

Other:
I recommend you replace the IDE drive. It's probably old and prone to failure, not to mention SLOW. For $70 you can find a 500GB or 1TB SATA drive. You could then CLONE the IDE to SATA (once you solve your boot problem) or possibly reinstall Windows after making suitable preparations (if you have an install disc).

An SSD isn't much more money, but a 120GB SSD (Samsung 840 recommended for $100) only has about 89GB after formatting and overprovisioning. If that's possible for you, you'd be amazed at the performance difference even if you only have a SATA1 connection. IDE HDD to SSD is simply amazing regardless of the rest of your hardware.

Cloning:
This can sometimes be problematic, but if a particular free program doesn't work, try a second one. Or, you can do a Backup, then Restore that backup (Acronis True Image or Windows Backup) from source drive to destination drive.

*I should add that there have been issues with cloning to the new Advanced Format hard drives (mostly worked but with issues); the only solution was to reinstall Windows from scratch.

I'm unaware if this issue exists with SSD's.

 

[Chris Martin]

in the boot menu it dosnt read the sata drive, but when i go on the boot menu at the very beggining of me turning it on its there

 

[Chris Martin]

in the *bios menu (not boot)

 

[Shaun o]

If the drive mode for the Sata drive is set to Sata in the bios menu.
Set it too Ahci mode.
The drive will then show up in the boot order list of the bios.

Don`t forget to save any changes you made to the bios settings before you exit it.
Or you will be going around in loops for ages.

 

[Chris Martin]

thankyou, i will try this tomorrow, hehe i wrote it down but i will let you all know how it went

 

[Chris Martin]

oh, also i have another post about my cpu...wondering if any one could take a look?

 

[photonboy]

oh, also i have another post about my cpu...wondering if any one could take a look?

Give a link.

 

[Chris Martin]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1793484/acer-915m08-8ks-dual-core.html