SATA Hard drive as secondary hdd.

[Spikae]

Hi, there, how are you all?

I am experiencing a problem with this SATA nonsense. I have an IDE harddrive as my main HDD, I wish to keep it this way as I don't want to re-install windows, I basically don't have the time to go about fiddling with all of that again and stuff. So I bought myself an SATA HDD, I know my motherboard can acceept it, it has 4 SATA slots. So I plugged it in and there are no jumpers, I thought great!! Then I powered on and the RAID system seems to recognise that it's there, but Windows does not. Again I thought to myself, thanks Windows, ya damn fool. I went and searched for the rivers (Hitachi Deskstar) and their (Hitachi's) website told me that WinXP already has the drivers! So one problem down. I searched over the internet and changed various settings in both my BIOS and RAID utilities, but to no avail. Once even completely losing the ability to boot. But I solved that. It's lucky I have a laptop available to find answers if this thing completely fails..

So basically. I am looking for a step by step guide, that comes in after I plug the SATA in. and I will say again. I wish to use my IDE as the primary harddrive running the OS and the SATA as storage. Don't ask me why, it's just easier for me this way :P

I hope someone can help! And thanks.

[Spikae]

Okay, I fixed the problem! Here is the solution;

1. After setting up the drive and plugging all the wires back in, fire up your computer.

2. Go to the BIOS setup and select "Integrated Peripherals" or "Peripheral Management", whichever option has the word Peripheral in it.

3. Hunt and find the SATA option and ENABLE it! You may have to open each menu to find where it says SATA, there will be some other letters before SATA but I forgot what they were. (Sorry)

4. After enabling this, save your options and exit BIOS, when Windows starts up it should find your hardware, don't celebrate yet.

5. Right click My Computer and go to Manage, then to Storage on the explorer window and Disk Management.

6. Right click your new drive and choose the partition option, then you should be able to allocate it's size and partition it according to your desires.

7. Make sure you've chosen to format it, just in case.

8. Wait for it to format and when it's done, enjoy your new SATA hard drive as it was meant to be enjoyed :)

This will also be posted on my website. Cuz I'm nice like that.