[doire]

I have one drive in my pc. This is an IDE drive with XP on it.

I want to buy two SATA drives. Is it just a matter of installing them and laoding the drivers? I want to keep XP on the IDE drive.

Thanks

[fructose]

Pretty much. Windows works fine with both types in your computer at the same time. Windows will recognize them as the D: and E: drives (or the D: if you are going with a RAID setup) and bump the CD/DVD drives down a letter. You can re-letter the drives with the Computer Management tool if you need to.

[doire]

Thanks Fructose.

I would like the two SATA disks to mirror one and other in terms of back-up...so that i can take one out and bring it to another computer and put it in.

I have bought the trays that will allow me to swap them in and out.

Have you any links about setting them up as mirrors?

[fructose]

I'm not to experienced in RAID setups, but I'm sure the guys in the hardware forum would be able to help more. I'll see if I can find someone to give you some info.

[doire]

Thanks

[doire]

Will XP pick up the SATA drives?

[fructose]

Windows will pick them up, and will treat them the same as IDE drives. How are you going to add them into your system? Through a separate PCI controller card, or does your mobo have native SATA support?

[doire]

fructose, on Jul 26 2006, 04:08 PM, said:

Windows will pick them up, and will treat them the same as IDE drives. How are you going to add them into your system? Through a separate PCI controller card, or does your mobo have native SATA support?

The user now wants just two SATA drives in the pc and no IDE.

So is this the order i need to follow: Install the SATA drives......then install XP....then setup the RAID?

or should RAID be setup first and then XP loaded on?

Thanks

[fructose]

If you want to mirror the drives, you'll have to set RAID up first. Is the RAID controller in the mobo, or on a separate card? And can you give me the specs?

[doire]

The pc is at home and im at work.

The controller is on the motherboard. Does this eman i will need to enter the BIOS to set it up...setup the RAID 0 and then install XP on one of the two SATA drives.

He doesnt want it mirrored now but RAID 0 instead (stripping)

[fructose]

Basically, yes, but once you stripe the drives in a RAID 0 setup, they act like one big drive, and that's how Win XP sees them. When you start the XP install, you may have to have the RAID drivers on a floppy so windows can use them. There will be a prompt to press F6 to install SCSI/third party drivers, and that is when you'll need the RAID drivers. From then on, it's a typical install.

[ktownkatman]

but that's if you have an ide port and an ata/sata port both on your computer. xp is PnP so you can either install xp first or the drives. it shouldnt matter.

[fructose]

It's true that you can setup striping in Win XP after you've installed it, but it's not PnP. You would need to go to go into disk management to set up the RAID configuration. That setup would be a software RAID, which depends on Windows to manage.

If you set up the RAID in BIOS and then install WinXP, the RAID will be managed by the BIOS and an OS problem won't cause a RAID problem.

[doire]

Ok guts thanks

I think i will install RAID 0 first and then do the install of XP.

I will let you know how i gewt on. The SATA drives will arrive here on tuesday