Adding a SATA drive to an i865PE mobo with IDE drives [Archive]

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smith94672

11-08-2006, 04:20 PM

tuskenraider

11-08-2006, 04:53 PM

Will my old 865PE-based motherboard support my prospective hard drive? I don't know, do you have SATA ports on the motherboard? If not, you can get an add-in PCI SATA controller for $30-40.Can I use the new drive alongside my two existing drives? Certainly.Can this new drive run at full SATA speed in spite of being used with two IDE drives?Yes. One has no affect on the other. Also, my board will support three hard drives simultaneously, right? Yes. Your 2 IDE channels support 2 drives each, so that's 4. And if you have SATA, that's one drive per port, typically 2 minimum for a SATA capable mobo.

smith94672

11-08-2006, 06:49 PM

[QUOTE=tuskenraider]I don't know, do you have SATA ports on the motherboard? QUOTE]

I have SATA ports on my board.

Just two more questions:
Will my board support drives that are 300 - 500 gb in size?

And I want to use my new SATA drive as a slave drive. Aside from changing the drive's jumper pin to slave mode, is there anything else I have to tweak to get it working as a slave drive? ( I know this is to be asked AFTER I purchase the drive. But I need to know this now, because I don't like surprises with difficult installations )

unhappy_mage

11-08-2006, 07:16 PM

Drives as large as you can buy should work fine, provided you meet the requirements enumerated in the sticky.

There is no "slave/master" thing with sata drives. They each get their own channel.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

tuskenraider

11-08-2006, 07:21 PM

Will my board support drives that are 300 - 500 gb in size? Sure, the only thing that would stop you from being able to use a drive that big was if you didn't have at least SP1 installed, but you have SP2, so no worries.And I want to use my new SATA drive as a slave drive. Aside from changing the drive's jumper pin to slave mode, is there anything else I have to tweak to get it working as a slave drive?There is no master/slave association with SATA. Every drive is technically a "master" since each port holds one drive. And before installing it, make sure the SATA controller is enabled in the BIOS and you boot into Windows and install the drivers for it. Then shut down, attach the drive and reboot.

Read this (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sata-or-serial-ata.htm) to get a little more familiar with SATA.

E4g1e

11-08-2006, 07:26 PM

I currently have a P4 system with an Intel 865PE chipset ( from ECS ) and 2 IDE hard drives.

Nowadays, I'm not finding my hard drive spaces to be enough. I want to get add a 3rd drive, possibly in the range of 300 - 500 gb with SATA interface.

Will my old 865PE-based motherboard support my prospective hard drive? Can I use the new drive alongside my two existing drives? Can this new drive run at full SATA speed in spite of being used with two IDE drives?

Also, my board will support three hard drives simultaneously, right?

Thanks in advance.

To be honest, all 865PE-based motherboards should have two SATA-150 (SATA I) ports in addition to the two IDE channels. If the drive you're getting supports SATA-300 (SATA II), you may need to jumper the drive for SATA-150 operation for proper operation with your mobo, depending on the drive model.

And unless you're running an outdated version of Windows (i.e. 98SE or Me, which supports a maximum of only four ATA/SATA drives total, which means that if you enable both of the IDE ports on your motherboard when running such an OS, you must disable all of the mobo's SATA ports), you should be good to go.