- May 1, 2013
- 2
- 0
- 10,510
Greetings all.
I have an IDE-Only QDI KinetiZ motherboard which supports only IDE Drives. Since prices for IDE Disks are comparable to SATA ones these days I thought to try and install Windows on a SATA hard disk (SATAIII Seagate 1TB). Problem is that the motherboard does not support SATA so as far as I can tell I'm left with two options:
Option#1: Install a PCI->SATA card and place the SATA HD on it
Option#2: Get a SATA-to-IDE converter ala http://www.e-shop.gr/product?id=PER.750653 and use it to plug my HD disk directly to the motherboard IDE slot.
I have some questions regarding these two options.
Regarding Option#1:
I experimented with installing WindowsXP on a PCI->SATA Fasttrak TX2300 (flashed to the latest bios as well). The pci card is functional per se (I can use its bios to create JBOD or RAID0) however I cannot boot from it:
- The BIOS of the motherboard (latest I found was 4.1) does not seem to be able to boot the SATA drive after the first phase of Windows installation is complete (aka after the first reboot)
- I have tried all sorts of bios options ranging from "boot from SCSI" to "boot other device". There is no option to boot from "add-on card" of any kind.
- I tried to install windows with the SATA HD configured in both JBOD and RAID0 mode to no avail. After the first reboot my motherboard bios complains that it doesn't find a disk to boot from.
- Windows7 does not even bother to install on the SATA HD complaining that it can't create the partitions it needs on it. However if I install Win7 on an IDE disk on the same machine then Win7 can cope perfectly with the same disk as a secondary-disk.
Note: If at all possible I would like to avoid having a separate IDE disk just to host the windows bootloader on it so as to boot from the SATA drive (if that's even a possibility).
My questions regarding the PCI/SATA approach:
- Just a shot in the dark: If I install Windows on the same SATA drive using a different machine that has a motherboard with SATA connectors (using generic drivers + install the driver for my Fasttrak pci card) and then move the SATA disk back to the QDI motherboard will it manage to boot? (I dont think so but I thought to ask to be certain)
- I've read some forum posts from people that managed to overcome problems with the BIOS similar to mine by using PCI->SATA cards such as Rosewill RC-212 with "Bootable ROM bios". Does anyone know if using such a card will do me any good in this case? Or is my motherboard BIOS so limiting that I will be stuck with not being able to boot from the SATA hard drive again?
- If everything else fails is BIOS hacking an option? Is there any way to "convince" the BIOS to boot from the PCI card? (Programmer here so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty given proper instructions on how to proceed)
Approach#2: Using a SATA-to-IDE intermediate converter such as http://www.e-shop.gr/product?id=PER.750653
In this case I would just like to ask if there is any severe penalties involved in the conversion or if the performance will be around 100MB/sec (which is decent for such an old PC). An old IDE disk I have benchmarked on this machine has give or take 50MB/sec transfer rate in reading from/writing to it. Using my SATA hard disk as a secondary disk and running same benchmarks on it yelled almost twice the transfer rate of the IDE Disk. Will this keep on being the case when using the SATA-to-IDE converter? And what about stability/data integrity? Does anyone have any experience with this approach?
This is all. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. I would appreciate any help that I can get on this issue. Be safe and wings under your wings.
Cheers,
Dominick
I have an IDE-Only QDI KinetiZ motherboard which supports only IDE Drives. Since prices for IDE Disks are comparable to SATA ones these days I thought to try and install Windows on a SATA hard disk (SATAIII Seagate 1TB). Problem is that the motherboard does not support SATA so as far as I can tell I'm left with two options:
Option#1: Install a PCI->SATA card and place the SATA HD on it
Option#2: Get a SATA-to-IDE converter ala http://www.e-shop.gr/product?id=PER.750653 and use it to plug my HD disk directly to the motherboard IDE slot.
I have some questions regarding these two options.
Regarding Option#1:
I experimented with installing WindowsXP on a PCI->SATA Fasttrak TX2300 (flashed to the latest bios as well). The pci card is functional per se (I can use its bios to create JBOD or RAID0) however I cannot boot from it:
- The BIOS of the motherboard (latest I found was 4.1) does not seem to be able to boot the SATA drive after the first phase of Windows installation is complete (aka after the first reboot)
- I have tried all sorts of bios options ranging from "boot from SCSI" to "boot other device". There is no option to boot from "add-on card" of any kind.
- I tried to install windows with the SATA HD configured in both JBOD and RAID0 mode to no avail. After the first reboot my motherboard bios complains that it doesn't find a disk to boot from.
- Windows7 does not even bother to install on the SATA HD complaining that it can't create the partitions it needs on it. However if I install Win7 on an IDE disk on the same machine then Win7 can cope perfectly with the same disk as a secondary-disk.
Note: If at all possible I would like to avoid having a separate IDE disk just to host the windows bootloader on it so as to boot from the SATA drive (if that's even a possibility).
My questions regarding the PCI/SATA approach:
- Just a shot in the dark: If I install Windows on the same SATA drive using a different machine that has a motherboard with SATA connectors (using generic drivers + install the driver for my Fasttrak pci card) and then move the SATA disk back to the QDI motherboard will it manage to boot? (I dont think so but I thought to ask to be certain)
- I've read some forum posts from people that managed to overcome problems with the BIOS similar to mine by using PCI->SATA cards such as Rosewill RC-212 with "Bootable ROM bios". Does anyone know if using such a card will do me any good in this case? Or is my motherboard BIOS so limiting that I will be stuck with not being able to boot from the SATA hard drive again?
- If everything else fails is BIOS hacking an option? Is there any way to "convince" the BIOS to boot from the PCI card? (Programmer here so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty given proper instructions on how to proceed)
Approach#2: Using a SATA-to-IDE intermediate converter such as http://www.e-shop.gr/product?id=PER.750653
In this case I would just like to ask if there is any severe penalties involved in the conversion or if the performance will be around 100MB/sec (which is decent for such an old PC). An old IDE disk I have benchmarked on this machine has give or take 50MB/sec transfer rate in reading from/writing to it. Using my SATA hard disk as a secondary disk and running same benchmarks on it yelled almost twice the transfer rate of the IDE Disk. Will this keep on being the case when using the SATA-to-IDE converter? And what about stability/data integrity? Does anyone have any experience with this approach?
This is all. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. I would appreciate any help that I can get on this issue. Be safe and wings under your wings.
Cheers,
Dominick
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