Installing Second Hard Drive Help

[Andy20412]

Hi Guys,

I'm kind of a newbie here (first build), but I have a question regarding the installation of a secondary hdd.


My Equipment:
Motherboard: Asrock Extreme4 Gen 3
SSD: Mushkin Chronos 120gb SSD

Recently Purchased:
Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 7200.12 1TB 6 gb/s SATA


For my current setup, I have just been using my SSD as my primary and only hard drive (ACHI mode) w/ windows 7 and a few misc. applications installed on it. I just recently purchased a seagate hdd, which will be primarily used for storage and a few applications, depending on the amount of space left on my SSD in the future. I was wondering if I should install my seagate on the same sata 6 gb/s controller as my ssd (thus having it in ACHi mode as well) or install it on a different sata 6 gb/s controller and have the hdd in ide mode?

Any help or information would be greatly appreciated!

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Shouldn't make any difference on the controller. You should be able to set the HDD mode separately in the BIOS. If not, move the HDD SATA cable to the other port on your MB.

 

[Andy20412]

Awesome, thank you!

 

[foscooter]

Don't put the HDD in IDE mode!!!!! Use ACHI, or Enhanced.

Which port won't matter, HDD don't come anywhere close the the bandwidth of either SATA II or SATA III. And it won't slow down your SSD.

But IDE mode will kill it!

 

[bigj231]

Agreed. There is no reason to run a disk in IDE mode unless the OS does not support AHCI, or you are trying to run legacy hardware (which won't even be SATA anyway).

 

[Andy20412]

Wow, good to know about not running in IDE mode. Thanks again for all of your input!