Question About Setting Up SATA Hard Drives

[solaris54]

Rigfht now I have 2 SATA hard drives installed in my system. The system drive is in sata 1 position and I have a slave drive that I just reformatted in sata position 2.

I want to take the system drive off the computer and install WinXP onto the newly reformatted slave drive and leave it in the sata 2 position.

Is it alright to do it this way. After I install XP does it stay sata 2 or does it automatically become sata 1 for boot purposes. Or do I need to move this drive to the sata 1 position after removing the other drive?

 

[f1y]

i think you'll be good. you may have to go into bios and set HD 2 to first boot priority

 

[solaris54]

I guess my main question is are the sata plugs on the mobo numbered and do they always stay at that number no matter which drive you plug into it.

 

[simplemind]

I'll bump for you. Had the same question!

 

[drizzt81]

I guess my main question is are the sata plugs on the mobo numbered and do they always stay at that number no matter which drive you plug into it.

yes they are numbered, you ought to have a diagram detailing the numbering scheme in your handbook. Additionally most motherboards have the port number silkscreened next to the port as well. Obviously, the port number is not going to change regardless of which drive you plug in, since it is a physical thing: the controller IC has pins which are designated for each port. Unless you do some rather fancy motherboard modification, the ports will not change.

What I think you may have meant, though, is whether the `drive letter' that windows assigns to a HDD changes when you move it to a different port. I do not have a full understanding of how windows assigns drive letters, so I cannot help you with that question.

 

[solaris54]

Yes I answered my own question by just switching drives and OS around and found out that they are indeed fixed on the mobo.

I finally got the drive letter to where I wanted it by switching the OS from hard drive to hard drive.