PCA Forums

I'm contemplating replacing my second hard drive to get a bigger one. Right now I have 2 IDE drives. Dunno if I should just get another IDE or go SATA with the second one. The first hard drive is partitioned (2) with OS on one partition. I really don't want to replace that drive as it's working fine (so is second one actually). Second drive is mostly games and files.

Can I run 1st hard drive IDE and second one SATA? How hard is this process? Is there any advantage to going SATA with the second drive? I had heard the second hard drive will only be as fast as the first one. If that's true, then what would be the point of going SATA (I would assume SATA is faster)?

Also, I would want to copy all my contents from the existing second hard drive to the new second hard drive. I have Ghost 2003 that I have used before to do this. But now (if I went SATA for second drive) I would have that IDE to SATA situation. Don't think Ghost can do this.

Anyway, I would love to hear comments, suggestions, etc on this. Thanks

Yes, you can have both

It is as simple as plugging in the drive

If a new SATA HDD is costlier, it won't be of much advantage then as a 2nd, storage type HDD.

I run PATA as my primary backup stuff and SATA as my secondary drive w/ windows on it. Should work like a charm

No problem just make sure that in the BIOS menu you have IDE0 set as the first boot device.

yea, definitely check your boot order. i have machines running IDE and SATA simultaneously; i have os partitions on both drives. a word of advice i found out the hard way - if you ever set up a multiboot, it is much, much easier to deal with if you have your os partitions on the same drive

and disable the other drives when you do a windows install, put them back online after installation is complete.

it is most likely (depending on your board) you can run both IDE drives as well as the additional SATA. there should be no need to take out the other IDE drive.