SATA and IDE Hard Drives?
"I want to install the hard drive from my old computer as the secondary hard drive of my new computer. The new computer is an HP with a SATA hard drive. My old hard drive is a Seagate Ultra ATA/100. How do I add this hard drive to my new computer?"
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Can I Have Both SATA and IDE Drives in a Computer?
Most new computers come with SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drives, which are faster and more reliable than the older IDE style drives. Some motherboards have connectors for both SATA and IDE, but chances are your computer will support only one or the other.
If you have an IDE drive and you want to connect it to your new computer which has a SATA drive installed, you have two options:
- The first option is to open up the system unit and see if the motherboard has IDE connectors. (The documentation for your computer may also tell you this.) Refer to the photos in Adding a Second Hard Drive if you're not familiar with SATA and IDE connections. If you have both, plug in the IDE drive's data and power cables, turn the computer on and hopefully both drives will show up.
- If you don't have an IDE connector on your new system, you can buy a kit to convert your old IDE drive into an external drive, and connect it with a standard USB cable. Addonics and other companies offer these kits, so you can shop around for the one that seems best for you.
One advantage of going with an external drive is that you can easily move the hard drive from one computer to another, and use it as a backup device for all your computers.
Got comments or questions about adding a second hard drive? Post your thoughts below...
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Posted by Bob Rankin on December 29, 2006 03:35 PM
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Most recent comments on "SATA and IDE Hard Drives?"
(See all 20 comments for this article.)|
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I have two 20 Gig IDE hard drives (c,d). I want to upgrade to an 160 gig Western Digital (16MB cache, very quiet) SATA2 hard drive. My motherboard has an output connection (plug) for SATA1 (150/sec), not SATA2 (300/Sec). Will a SATA2 hard drive work with my motherboard that operates with SATA1 only???? EDITOR'S NOTE: I've read that Sata2 is backwards compatible with Sata1, so give it a try. |
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Hi Bob, I am having the same problem as Jesse. I am using an IDE to Sata bridge converter to connect a 250g Maxtor internally. I have plenty of room and plenty of power connections. I can not get the computer to recognize the new drive in the Bios. I have tried switching the order of the SATA connections, and if the new drive is in sata0 the computer will not recognize either drive. Any suggestions? EDITOR'S NOTE: Perhaps the adapter is defective. Did you try various jumper combos on the IDE drive? |
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Hi Bob I am building a new computer and want to take a hard drive from an older computer and use the operating system on the new computer. I hear that once you install a copy of Windows XP on computer its registered to that computer and a install of the software on a new computer will not be accepted by Microsoft when it connects to the internet. So I have been told that I need to install the old drive into the new computer and do a repair. EDITOR'S NOTE: Just go ahead and try installing on the new disk. I've heard that MS allows multiple installs as long as a few months have elapsed. If you run into trouble, just call the MS hotline and tell them you're replacing a failed HD and it will be fine. |
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how do I boot SATA HDD converted to IDE? it says hard disk fails. EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't know of any way to convert a SATA drive to IDE. They are different at the hardware level. There are adapters to let you connect a SATA drive to an IDE slot on a motherboard (and vice versa). If you've done that, and the drive won't boot, it could be a hardware defect in the drive or the adapter. |
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Hi Bob, I have a new computer that has an 80GB SATA drive in it and I hooked up a new 250GB IDE drive. The IDE drive shows up in device manager but not in windows explorer. How do I get it to show up? EDITOR'S NOTE: Has the new drive been formatted? If not, try Disk Management tool. |
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I have just built a new computer and im currently have XP installed on to an IDE HDD. I recently bought a SATA HDD but now im stuck with the problem of trying to get Xp onto the SATA since my father in law has the XP disk. Is there program available to be able to put XP from the IDE onto the Sata. EDITOR'S NOTE: Your XP disc most likely lacks the SATA drivers. Check on the website of the company that made the SATA drive for the XP driver software. |
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Hi Bob, Sorry if this has been asked before, but i have windows vista and have just added a second SATA hard drive. The drive is visable in the bios and in device manager but when opening 'my computer' there only appears to be one hard drive on the system. Any help would be greatly received. EDITOR'S NOTE: You may need SATA drivers for XP. Check the website of the HDD maker. |
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I have a SATA bootable hard drive, and I'm adding a brand new, clean, IDE drive internally for extra storage. I assume I set the jumper to slave on the IDE, since I won't be booting from it? Which plug on the data cable should I use though: the one in the middle or the one at the end? EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think it matters which plug you use. But my guess is that you'll need to set the drive jumper as Master, not Slave, since it's the only IDE drive. SATA has no master/slave concept, so the IDE drive will not be seen as a slave to the SATA drive. |
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my question is who is the brilliant person who came up with sata drive's you have no control over if it mess's up you cant even piggy back to to recover files to another drive Would it have been too hard to put a jumper for master/slave with ide you can , sata forget it you had Best Back Up Any and Every Thing !! You Want. They may be fast but so is a scsi and data recovery is expensive so if you have sata ,a burner is a life saver and cd/dvd disks dont cost much please use them ! ya know 10ms aint that long? |
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I've been reading the posts, but haven't yet found one exactly like my situation. I have a VIA K8T800P-8237 motherboard with a failing Ultra ATA drive. I have a new SATA drive and adapter card. I want to config and use the new drive as my primary (of course :), but not be down the length of time it would take me to swap drives and start from scratch. Can I configure my new drive as a slave, installing Windows XP and apps, while running on the old one; then switch the new one to master and remove the old one? Thanks! EDITOR'S NOTE: I would install the new drive, and temporarily disconnect the old one. Then reboot and install Windows+apps on the new drive. Now shut down, reconnect the old drive and configure the BIOS to boot from the new drive. You'll have your shiny new drive running, and you can copy the files you need from the old drive to the new one, before retiring it. |
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