How do I hook up the SATA drives on my board?

Sata set up is very simple. You basically connect one end of the sata cable to the sata port on the HDD then the other end into the sata port on the mobo. You then connect your PSU's sata power cord into the HDD's sata power connector and your set. That simple. Same install process for the DVD drive as well. No need to do anything in bios unless of course your doing some sort of Raid configurations which you stated you are not. The HDD should automatically be detected when the PC boots up and you basically format it like you would any other drive (if your installing the OS that'll format the entire drive for you). Sata installation is not very difficult that is why it is quickly becoming the new standard.

wingsofzion -

thanks a bunch for that.

I just want to make sure my VISTA is not insalled on the 500gb drive. I guess to be safe I'll just install the 160gb first, do my VISTA install, and then plug in the 500gb drive second after VISTA is installed. Make sense?

Page 43... I'd choose ahci...

No need for installing your HDD's in steps. Remember you working with two different drives so one will not interfere with the other unless you raid them or something. Here's a suggestion. Let's be on the safe side. So you have 2 HDD's. One 160GB and one 500GB. I'd suggest you just partition off sections for Vista and for the rest of the programs. Look at this lay out:

HDD:
160GB Drive
500GB Drive

Partition Layout:
C Drive: 30GB space for Vista
P Drive: 125GB space for programs, games and such
S Drive: 500GB space for mass storage

Partition Layout details:
The C: Drive
Make this partition about 30GB big. The install of Vista isnt like good ole XP where you only need like 1.5GB of space, Vista is a whopping 15GB big. Basically you'll make the C drive 30GB big where 15GB of it will be the basic Vista install and the remaining 15GB space will be your OS's breathing room. When you install certain programs they require that certain files be in the drive that has the OS. That is what the 15GB of free space is for.

The P: Drive
Make this partition the size of the remaining space available on your 160GB drive, which after the 30GB going to Vista will be about 130GB or so (of course you'll loose a few GB's to the formating process). This partition of your drive will be where you install ALL of your programs you run on your PC. Make certain you dont install ANY programs on the C drive but install them here. This will help you in ALOT of ways.

The S: Drive
Make this your 500GB drive. This drive will be your mass storage dumping grounds basically. Store all your crap here, and if you need to back up your other 160GB drive for whatever reason the back up file can be placed in here.

Benifits of Partitioning Layout:
The biggest factor in this is the dredded reformat nightmare. Let's say for some reason your OS is acting stupid and you need to reinstall your OS. First thing that comes to mind will be "damn i'll loose all my programs". Well not in this case. Remember your entire OS is installed on the C: drive ONLY and ONLY that partition will be wiped clean during the reinstall process. When you reinstall your OS your P drive will still be there untouched and guess what, so will all your programs. You may have to reinstall some for registar purposes but hey, better than loosing all your data right?

Hope this helps. I'll keep watch on this thread in case you have any more questions.

Wingsofzion -

Oh man, thanks this is super helpful. I cant believe VISTA is such a kluge for space!

One thought - If I make a partition on my 500 gig drive for programs rather than on the 160 gig drive, would program access be a little faster as, with a multiprocessor chip (I have the Q6600 Quad Core chip) it can help process program loading between the "S" drive and the "C" drive? I am curious of this because it seems if I am running my programs off of the partitioned P drive then my 160 gig drive will be doing most of the work.

Also, in addition to gaming, I am planning on doing some video editing on this computer. I think I will purchase Pinnacle Studio Ultimate ($$$!) and well... rendering/compiling edited videos can take a couple of hours.

Because of this video editing I would want to place the program/data/OS drives in their ultimate physical and partitioned location so that the two drives / three partitions communicated in the most efficient layout. Do you think your suggested layout is the most efficient given this?

Thanks for your awesome thoughts and help on this!