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Mixing SATA & IDE HDD

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Binnit

Binnit

Technical User
Apr 28, 2004
627
US
I have aquired a new PC which has a SATA HDD. I also have a prevous 300gb IDE HDD.

The new PC only has one DVD drive and has spare IDE cable slot on the MB.

Can I connect my old IDE HDD to the spare IDE slot? will it work or conflict with other hardware?


Happiness is...not getting what you want but wanting what you have already got
 
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I have connected my old HD as external Disk via USB.
 
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appi
I appreciate that I can do it that way, just wanted to build it in the box if at all possible.

Maybe I should just try it out!

Happiness is...not getting what you want but wanting what you have already got
 
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You should be able to connect your HD without any problem. As long as the Jumpers on the IDE drive are set correctly.

If you are going to connect it to the same cable the DVD driver i n. Make sure the HD is master, and the DVD drive is slave.

If you have another free IDE connector, just set the drive to master, and everything should be o.k.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
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vacunita
Thanks for your guidance (just got back to reading the posts)and havn't actually tried connecting it up yet.

Happiness is...not getting what you want but wanting what you have already got
 
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Binnit,
Here is a word of caution. Depending on a couple of factors, you MAY have some problems once you connect your IDE HD.

1) Depending on the age of the mobo, once you connect the IDE HD, you may no longer be able to see or boot from the SATA drive. And unless your OS has the SATA drivers rolled into it, you'll need to reload the OS.

2) And depending on your BIOS settings, you may need to go in and change those settings so that the first boot device is your SATA drive.

Again, this may or may not be an issue. You'll know as soon as you connect your IDE HD and boot your pc. I know this was a problem with older mobo's. Not sure if it is any more or not.
 
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Valid concerns PRPhx, but since binnit said this is a new PC with SATA support built in from factory, then its most likely set to boot from the SATA first.

Still valid concerns though.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
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