Some advice needed with SATA

[delcom5]

Hi,
I have a PC currently with IDE. I would like to replace the IDE drives with SATA. I was planning to get a SATA PCI card, put the new SATA drives on them and only use the Secondary IDE for CD Rom. Would this work? Will the SATA drives boot since there will be no drive in the Primary IDE?

Thanks

 

[prong]

Hi,
I have a PC currently with IDE. I would like to replace the IDE drives with SATA. I was planning to get a SATA PCI card, put the new SATA drives on them and only use the Secondary IDE for CD Rom. Would this work? Will the SATA drives boot since there will be no drive in the Primary IDE?

Thanks

If your MB doesn't have SATA support, I would suggest to simply get a new board that does first off. Put the money for a SATA controller PCI card towards a new MB. As far as still using your IDE controller for one of your IDE hard drive, your BIOS is still going to recognize that IDE connection from your MB as a boot drive in BIOS. You should be able to set your BIOS to not attempt to boot to the IDE drive and still have your HD set up for storage. Every BIOS different, so you would have to try and see what you get in BIOS with the set up you are thinking of using. HTH.

 

[prong]

Will the SATA drives boot since there will be no drive in the Primary IDE?

Yes. As long as the SATA drives were recognized in BIOS and could be set as a boot drive in BIOS they should work. The SATA controller would be dependent on your BIOS also. Removing the Primary IDE hardrive setup would only remove the drive attached to it from BIOS as a possible boot drive. HTH.