Converting primary disk from IDE to SATA

[Mosylu]

Hi Rob

Great site you've got here! Just wish I'd found it before I got myself into my current situation.

I am trying to upgrade my primary hard drive and having a little bit of trouble in the very last step. Here is what I did:

1. Installed the SATA hDD in my tower, which previously had only known IDE. However, there were a couple of Serial ATA connections on the motherboard, so I figured it wouldn't be too painful.

2. Got into WinXP, which recognized it, yay! Formatted it using Disk Manager thru My Computer.

3. Used NortonGhost to clone my old hard drive (C: ) to my new one (now F: ). I checked and all the different folders seem to have transferred over all right.

4. Restarted the computer, hit F2 to get into setup, told it not to recognize my old C: in hopes that my F: drive, which after all had Windows installed, would then step up to the plate.

5. Got out of setup, let it continue on into windows. But it got hung up on the welcome splash screen. I restarted. Same. Gak.

6. I went back into setup, told it to recognize C:, and now I'm working off my cramped old hDD while my big beautiful new one with all its space is sitting in my chassis like a lump on a log. I can get to it as a secondary hard drive, but what's the point in that when I bought it to replace my old one?

Whether I used all my daring up or I'm just now realizing that I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm hesitant to fiddle around too much from here. I am not sure whether this is a cloning issue, an IDE-to-SATA issue, or Windows just being a bugger.

Is there a simple step I'm missing? Or do I have to start from scratch?

Thanks for any help you can supply.

Mo

[Rob]

You're doing a couple of things I haven't tried before.

One is using an IDE hard drive and SATA hard drive together. This is definitely doable, but I don't have first-hand experience with what settings, if any, might need to be made to configure it properly.

The other is booting Windows from a drive other than C:. I don't know about this.

If it were me then the next step I would try is disconnecting the IDE hard drive altogether and booting with just the SATA hard drive connected. This removes the two variables I just mentioned. Enter the BIOS when first booting with just the SATA hard drive connected and verify just the SATA hard drive is recognized. If all goes well then you can take the next step of getting it to work with the IDE hard drive.

[Mosylu]

Hi Rob

Thanks for your advice. On a hunch, I went back and had a look at a few things, and apparently my computer has been running off the F: drive ever since I put it in. Uh, yippee? Because all my shortcuts and things still point to locations on the C: . . . so Windows is actually running from F: but using data on C: (You can see why I am a librarian instead of a computer tech!) Clearly, this is why you sounded so negative about booting from a drive other than C:

I thought, "This would be so easy if I could just swap drive names. Or at least call the new drive C:" Disk Manager wouldn't let me rename my system drive (F: ), although it did offer to let me change the name on C:. The only way I can see to get my computer to boot from C: is to disconnect the F: drive completely, and that doesn't help for changing the drive letter of F.

Is there a way (from outside Windows I should think) to rename the drives? Or even to convince it to boot from C:?

Again, thanks for any help.

Mo

P.S. The IDE and the SATA seem to be playing together nicely. Maybe too nicely--my computer pouts and sulks at the windows splash screen when I take IDE away. But that's probably connected to the whole C: F: thing.

[Rob]

I'm not aware of a way to change the logical drive letters outside of Windows. This link is for changing them from Windows XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

You say the computer is unhappy when you take the IDE hard drive away and boot with just the SATA hard drive. Try this - When you boot with just the SATA hard drive, go into the BIOS when you boot and disable the IDE interface that had the IDE hard drive.

[Mosylu]

I'm not aware of a way to change the logical drive letters outside of Windows. This link is for changing them from Windows XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

You say the computer is unhappy when you take the IDE hard drive away and boot with just the SATA hard drive. Try this - When you boot with just the SATA hard drive, go into the BIOS when you boot and disable the IDE interface that had the IDE hard drive.

That article specified that I couldn't change the boot volume with Disk Manager. However, I found this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us
and, after several warnings not to do this unless you really really really had to, it said you could change drive letters through Registry Editor. I waffled over it for a bit, then decided to go for it and changed the letters. Restarting
(and disabling the IDE interface through BIOS along the way), I was able to boot from the once F: now C: drive. Success! It's now running happily.

Thanks for all your help and I'll check back in next time I want to upgrade something.

Mo

[oldergeek]

I had similar problems until I discovered the BIOS options require you to select what kind of hard drives are present and how to utilize them, SATA only, PATA/SATA, or PATA only.etc. Check your Advanced Chipset Settings.

[ronniebee]

I have a new system with 2 Sata raid configed drives:

1. I installed two 500GB satas with Windows XP64, and configured them in raid stripe mode. They came us as a 1-TB drive "I". Probably because "C" and "D" are reserved for IDE. and I had two optical Ram drives installed on the IDE secondary "G" and "H".

2. Once they were up and booting, I re-enabled my 2 IDE drive connections and installed my 2 old 360GB drives on the IDE Cable. They came up as "C" and "D" and I was able to copy all my data over to the new "I" 1-TB raid drive setup.

3. Once I had the drives copied, I uninstalled the IDE drives and returned them to my old Dell system, which is now my wife's.

Seems to me as long as you configure your SATA RAID drives first, and install Windows on them, then Windows has no problems booting from SATA, and finding the IDE drives; although they still have to be configured as Master and Slave to read them if you're using 2 IDEs.

Ronnie Bee