Hello i wondered if i could pick your brains , i am looking to install another h/drive for extra storage i currently have an 80gb SATA as my main drive , running on an Abit BH7 mobo , (which has only one sata plug) , on ide 1 i have my two optical drives and ide2 is empty , i read in the manual that when using sata one of the ide2 channels is rendered useless , i cannot remember which one as i have lost the manual
i am looking to install a 200gb ide ata/133 HD , i was going to put it on ide2 and set it to slave , is this the correct way to wire it
this drive is only for storage , no OS will be installed , if anyone has any advice i would be most grateful
thanks Darren

Sure, you can do that w/o any problem

Just make sure your bios has it enabled and you can add as any normal IDE drive would.

make sure SATA is set to boot first and that you have the IDE channels enabled.

thanks , i will try this when the courier co decides to deliver it , thanks again

Since your manual said you lose one of your IDE's when You use the sata and you are not using the secondary ide I think you will find that the secondary IDE will not work for adding your new drive.

You will probably need to lose one of the optical drives.
(Why are you running two?)
Add the new drive as slave on the primary IDE

Copying discs works better when copied to the hard drive then back to the same disc...

Yes, you shouldn't have any probs with such a setup.

In response to thong inspector's statement
I agree it's better, but doing so will NOT copy the boot sector off of bootable disks. A direct disc to disc copy will make an exact replica, including boot sector.