Sata and IDE together !

[rainman202]

I have an Abit IC7 motherboard runnin windows xp sp2 all updates etc 80gb maxtor hd IDE

How can i find out whats the biggest HD this mother board will support ?
And

Can i use IDE and SATA drives together ? I have a disk for the drives for sata

I want to get something like a 250Gb HD Sata 8Mb cache ( This board has 2 slots somewhere i seen them ) and use the 80Gb Maxtor IDE as a spare back up

Would this work do you think ? Cos i dont have a clue lol :rolleyes:

Cheers Mike

[MJCfromCT]

Since you already have the 80GB drive installed and running your OS, I think it would be easier to add the extra drive as the back-up/secondary drive in your system. That way, you don't need to reinstall Windows or any of your programs.

As long as you have a semi-recently manufactured motherboard with an up-to-date BIOS installed, you can install basically any size hard drive you want. From 5 to 750GB.

[rainman202]

Ok thanks MJCFromCT for the reply - All i know is i bought this board less than 2yrs ago , the other reason i want to change the HD to sata is hopefull so it will be quieter and of course more space and use the 80G as backup and unplug it
thats the idea anyhow

Thanks again mike

[MJCfromCT]

It is perfectly possible to use a new SATA drive as your main drive, but as I said, you'd need to reinstall Windows and all your programs on the new drive.

I'm curious about how you will use the 80 GB drive as a backup. How will you be able to back up 250GB of data (if you buy a 250 GB drive, for example), on an 80 GB drive? The reverse would certainly be possible (back up 80 GB on a 250).

[BipolarBill]

As long as SATA is enabled on the motherboard and all storage controller drivers are installed, there's no reason why you can't switch to SATA. Simply clone the old drive to new and set the BIOS boot sequence to SATA first (enable SATA boot ROM too). Remove the old drive to be sure and boot up normally. Once Windows settles down, add the old drive and format it.

[Crashman]

I have an Abit IC7 motherboard

How can i find out whats the biggest HD this mother board will support ?
And

Can i use IDE and SATA drives together ?

Would this work do you think ? Cos i dont have a clue lol :rolleyes:

Cheers Mike

Your board is new enough that you don't need a clue, just buy something and plug it in.

[rainman202]

Im goin to buy a new sata drive say 250 or 300gb use the 80gb as backUPs Hopefully i will never use up 250GB of storage space anyway,

I have 80g maxtor (main ) and a 40gb as back up right now backup is partitioned into 2x20gbs and im using acronis true image v7, Its no problem to reinstall windows xp ( i have the CD ) and all the drivers and other program Cds + i have the Disk for loading sata drivers on it and i read ur replies thx very helpfull and im confident i can do it lol Thanks Mike