Since no one ever replied to my previous post

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread33862.html

, I am rephrasing and refining my q....plz ans this time


ULTIMATE HARD DISK SETTINGS - brain racking question

Respected Tech gurus and dear forum members

Here goes the situation:

I have one INTEL 865 GBF motherboard

As far as I have understood (and correct me if i am wrong) i can attach six devices (be it Hard disk or optical drive).

Two sata hard disks can be attached to two sata interfaces and
Two pata hard disks cab be attached to EACH ide interfaces

Thus all in all 6 hard disks (or say 5 hard disks and one CD rom can be attached) on my intel 865 GBF motherboard.

Now furthermore i also understand that for SATA hard disks there is no problem of master / slave.

But for each pata HDD attached to either IDE channel, we can have

primary master
primary slave
secondary master
secondary slave

NOW MY QUESTION IS THAT :

Say I am having two SATA hard disks

SATA Hard Disk One with windows advanced server 2000 OS (80GB)
SATA Hard Disk Two with windows XP professional (160GB)

ALso I am having three PATA hard disks

PATA Hard Disk One with windows advanced server 2000 OS (80GB)
PATA Hard Disk Two with windows XP professional (80GB)
PATA Hard Disk Three with windows XP professional (160GB)

In addition last but not the least one CD-ROM drive

BIG QUESTION:

WHAT SHOULD BE MY SETTINGS (which pata hard disk should be connected to which ide channel and whether as master or slave) SO THAT I AM ABLE TO BOOT FROM ANY HARD DISK (i get a choice when i power on my computer to select hard disk i want to be in) AND AFTER BOOTING FROM A PARTICULAR HARD DISK BE ABLE TO ACCESS DATA OF ALL REMAINING HARD DISKS SIMULTANEOUSLY...??????????????????????????????

Please reply in detail specifying which hard disk (for pata) should be master / slave on what channel and reasons if possible...????

Regards

Sunando

p.s.

Is there any rule / standard which we have to adhere to while connecting PATA HDD and CD ROM to motherboard...?????

What If i do not connect CD-Rom as Primary Master but say as Secondary Slave...????????

Typically, you would connect 2 PATA hard drives on the Primary Channel, one PATA hard drive and CD-ROM on the Secondary Channel. The SATA connections you know.

About the Operating Systems:
You mentioned 3 installations of Windows XP Pro and 2 installations of Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Why would you have multiple installations of the same OS on multiple drives? You could install one copy each on Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Anyway, to answer your question. If the Operating Systems are already installed, then any change in the drive letters will cause them to not boot. You will need to run setup on each installation to repair it. Running setup for each OS will also cause it to add its entry to the boot.ini file and will let you select the OS you want.

If you are yet to install them, just install one copy of Windows XP and Windows 2000. You will be able to share your data between the Operating Systems without any problems at all.

Also, according to most software license agreements, you are allowed to install the OS only once at a time. Installing it multiple times on different partitions may violate the EULA. Verify you won't be violating your license agreement before you install.