multi question

well one im trying to figure out how to make my two sata hard drives individual not liked i wan to have one hard drive xp other vista and it seems that i have to go through raid to set it up or no? im really confused on how satas work as a whole so can some help me and another does any one no a program for test a mobo cuz the one i have seems to be screwed up

Heya,

I'll try to decrypt this for others:

1. You have two SATA hard disks and you want to keep them separate, ie, NOT use RAID so that you can install XP on one and Vista on the other.

2. You want to know if you have to use RAID to do this, or to use SATA with RAID in general.

3. You want to know how SATA drives work or how they are connected to the machine in general.

4. You want software to do scans and tests of your motherboard so that you can see if there's any obvious errors going on.

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Some preliminary answers:

1a. You do not have to use RAID to use your SATA drives. Just plug them in and do not enable RAID in BIOS. It's that simple. Install your primary OS on the first drive. Then go back later and install your other OS on the other drive.

2a. You do not need to use RAID at all with SATA. RAID is completely something different.

3a. They work just like old EIDE drives did. You simply plug them into their appropriate ports and power them up and you're good to go.

4a. Google is your friend here. Just search "motherboard test" software. Should be that simple.

Very best,