Is It Possible To Mix & Match SATA and IDE Hard Drives?
 

I'm currently building a system and am having trouble installing XP on my SATA hard drive. IDE Drives are cheap. But I don't want to go through the hassle of returning the SATA hard drive.

So, is it possible to run a SATA and IDE hard drive on the same system?

For the most part.. yes

XP will have no trouble with your SATA drives once the drivers have been loaded ( probably on a cdrom that came with your motherboard )

To install XP on to a SATA drive you either need the manufactuers driver floppy disk or you can try making your own by reading this blog post.

Also check out your motherboard or SATA controller manufactuers website for more recent driver downloads!

Here's the thing:

It comes on a floppy, and I really don't want to go out and buy a floppy, install it, and then never use it. Honestly this would be the only thing I would use it for. I was screwing around by trying to get a floppy drive out of an old Gateway but the case is straight from hell.

I'm thinking about getting a decent (cheap) IDE HD, get a matching (also cheap) SATA HD and run them in a RAID configuration.

the thought of a floppy-less system is completely foreign to me still. To my ears it sounds as odd as actually using IE for the internet rather than almost anything else out there with the Presto or Gecko rendering engine.

Some bioses will accept a USB floppy - so check if yours can and see if you can borrow one. Alternatively with mine I just stuck in a floppy drive I had from my old computer (hanging out of the side rather than properly installed), used the driver disk to get WinXP installed, then took it out and put it back in its dusty cupboard...

I tried using my SATA converter (converts IDE to SATA) on my CD-ROM and it wouldn't install windows. I haven't tried it with the hard drives yet, but I'm entirely positive you can run SATA and IDE at the same time.

Well, its good to know people are having these problems, I was getting ready to drop some money on one of those hella fast 10,000 RPM SATA monsters. Guess Ill wait a bit--waiting for the next gen of mobos anyways...

People aren't having problems with them. You just need a floppy drive to install the drivers. That's standard protocol...some come on CD's, but most come on floppies. I didn't use a floppy for 5 years, but recently bought one for $3 from a junk store. I haven't used it yet, but it's good to have one for situations like these!

-Lasereth

It wont matter, you still need a floppy if you plan on running any kind of RAID setup. Winxp will ask for the drivers right in the beginning of install--it will ONLY look on a floppy drive. Whether its SATA or a promise controller or whatever. The only time it wont is with onboatf RAID

I didnt mean problems, per se. I just didnt know that windows wouldnt natively recognize them.

Just ordered parts for a new system that has a SATA drive. Plus I have an old IDE HD that I will throw in. I'll let you know next week if it works.

Hmm... thanks for posting this.
Never thought that there would be any difference between installing a SATA or IDE hard drive on a new system; now I know better.
Guess that'll give me some info to prepare for the future.

Trying to run a mixed RAID of SATA and "Parallel" IDE disks will only negate the higher performance of the SATA disk. Don't do it.

Well, as promised, I am reporting on my new system.

I'm running a SATA as my c:\ drive and hooked up an IDE and the system saw it just fine.

The only problem I came across was that it saw the IDE drive as drive C: during the setup, even though I had loaded the SATA drivers.
(I put the necessary SATA drivers on floppy before hand thanks to all the comments in this post. THANKS GUYS!!!!!!) My solution was to hook up the IDE after loading XP.