Abit IS-7 hard drive

fo3

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May 25, 2004
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can anyone tell me, how can i have my computer to boot uo from the S-ATA hard drive, when i have a IDE hard drive also installed..
it will only boot from the IDE hard drive, and my windows on that one wont start for some reason..
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
LOL, very complicated answer!

OK, first thing is, you need to have BIOS set to boot from SATA first. Or better yet, ATAPI CD-ROM first and SATA second.

Then you have to have a drive connected to the SATA controller.

Then you have to set up Windows XP on the SATA drive.

Normally you'd need a driver floppy to use at the F6 prompt, but your particular controller should treat single SATA drives similarly to IDE so XP wouldn't have a problem finding them.

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xeenrecoil

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Jan 7, 2003
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heya fo3;

There are four things you need to worry about.

The first Three things are in your BIOS, First go to your Boot sequence Tab and move up the CD-Rom to boot first, then your SATA Drive, then your IDE drive. If you have a raid controller, the SATA drive wont actually show up in the boot order, and you wont have to worry about it, you likely wont ever actually boot from your IDE drive but its there incase your SATA dies, and you need to install your OS on your IDE drive.

The boot order should appear as the following if you have a Raid controller.

1) CD-Rom
2) INT-18 Network Device
3) IDE Hard Drive
4) Other Boot device

*Note*
I intentionaly left out the floppy drive because it is hardly ever required anymore, however if it is required for OS installation then have it appear first in the boot order.

Some managed network Cards will conflict with the INT-18 Network Device enabled in your boot order, if that is the case then disable it.
*End of Note*

Second, and thirdly goto your Advanced Tab then to the PCI Config Menu, and Select the following options.

Onboard ATA Device: <b> Enabled </b>
Onboard ATA Device First: <b> Yes </b>

what these two features do is self explainatory.

Finally upon installation of your OS you will need to have the SATA drivers handy on a floppy disk (Win2k), press F-6 to install your your SATA drivers, if your not running a raid array you need to select the single drive version of the driver, or some drivers are the same one for both.
WindowsXP should recognise the drive and install it as a SCSI device in which case you will need to install the drivers for it after the basic install of the OS.

Thats about it, you shouldnt have any trouble with the installation if you follow these instructions.


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