New build question.

[Sugaree]

Hello Folks.

First I wanted to thank you all for the great advise you provide to beginners like myself. It's great to have such a resource.

I'm building my first system as I write this and have a question that I can't find specific information on. I'm hoping that someone may be able to clear it up for me.

I am at the point in my build of connecting my SATA devices/cables to my motherboard. The motherboard is a P5Q-E. I have one SATA hard drive, one SATA DVD burner, and one SATA header cable that comes from the front panel of my Storm Scout.

I'm confused as to how these should be connected to the motherboard.

I have been told three different things so far.

1) I can connect the sata cables into any of the sata ports in any order. (ie, harddrive sata 3, dvd sata 1, header cable, sata2).

2) I must connect my hard drive (that holds my operating system) in the first sata port.(sata 1 on P5Q-E). (on other ports it would be recognized but not bootable).

3) I can connect the hard drive(with op system) to any port as long as there is "nothing" in any of the ports before it. (ie, HD in sata 3, sata 1 and 2 open).

Can someone please tell me which of these is correct?

The manual for the board states that hard drives can be used in any of the sata ports with no further specific information...

Thanks much.

 

[Nenu]

Motherboards often have 2 types of hard drive controller, 1 for normal drive access, the other for RAID configurations which can also be used as a normal controller but you may still need the RAID drivers installed.
Many motherboards have a twist on this which allows the RAID SATA connectors to run in a non RAID mode, you change which mode you want to use in the CMOS. The non RAID mode doesnt need extra drivers but the RAID mode does.

All SATA connectors look the same but some are running on a RAID controller which needs drivers while you install Windows otherwise it will crash with a blue screen.
No biggie, when it prompts you to install other drivers, press the key it asks and put in the driver disk.
You may need to prepare the driver disk first but I believe that todays products make it easy for Vista/Windows 7.
You can use ANY of the RAID SATA connectors, but be sure that when you install Windows, only the 1 hard drive is connected to the PC.

If you use the non RAID connectors, you can install the drive on ANY of those connectors too.
Be sure when you install Windows that the one hard drive is the only hard drive in the system.

If there is more than 1 hard drive when installing Windows, the boot system may be put on the wrong drive or you may format/install Windows on the wrong drive!


When you have more than 1 hard drive in the system after installing the OS('s), you can select which drive to boot from in the CMOS setup if you used the above installation technique.
This is a great way to dual boot as there is no dependancy on the other hard drives.
ie each OS can run with or without the other drives in the system.

note:
If you installed the OS on a non RAID controller and move it to a RAID controller, it may blue screen on boot up.
If it does, you need to install the RAID driver 'before' you move the drive to the RAID controller.

 

[Sugaree]

Thank you for the clarification and the additional information on the controllers and settings.

I am happy to see that my motherboard allows for individual settings for each sata port.

I've read up on how to configure them and how they are configured by default. With the information you provided I have the complete picture.
I thank you once again for your time and efforts.