8KNXP Ultra set-up query

[Yarberger]

Hi everyone

A very noobish question - forgive me!

I am doing a revamp of an old system which contains the above motherboard. It was a top board 3 years ago - now it seems a bit retro...

Anyway, I intend to replace the current IDE HDD with two SATA HDDs (they will not be in a RAID configuration).

Can I now use IDE ports 1 and 2 for the optical drives? The manual does not suggest that they are dedicated HDD ports, and I can't see why they would be.

Thanks

 

[MG37221]

Yes you can.

 

[duthoy]

sure, you can ise both IDE connectors for optical drives, actually i would recommend it. if they are free.
but, you will probably need a disk to load the driver for you S-ata ports when you start the windows XP setup (press F6 to load other drivers) or something like that.
also, maybe you've disabled all of the onboard stuff you don't need in your Bios, (like onboard VGA, Audio, S-ata controllers, serial ports,...)
make sure you've enabled your S-ata ports

that's what I did, if you don't need it, disable it!

 

[NaDa]

Yes of course you can use the IDE ports for whatever can stick in.
They are not dedicated to hdds.
If you are gonna plug two cd/dvd drives then its best to use a separate cable for each device.

 

[Yarberger]

Thanks for your input!

I did not disable anything except sound and graphics, as I had my own dedicated card in each case.

Is it likely that the relevant sata drivers came with the cd that accompanied the motherboard?