How to replace IDE hard drive with SATA II drive?

danmanchester

Hello all,

As title asks : how to replace an IDE drive with a SATA one?

Well I know that basically I just take one out and put the other one in the advice I'm really after is what's the best sequence to do this in?

My current IDE 300GB drive has been running quite happily for 3+ years now but is almost full, mostly videos. (Data, docs and pics backed up elsewhere) and I want to transfer all this to my new 1TB Samsung F3 sata drive so that new drive is the only one with operating system, then I'll be recycling the IDE in another pc after wiping it.

This is where I'm getting a bit stuck: do I just completely remove the IDE drive, then connect the Sata, format and reinstall Windows 7 (it's a retail licence so no transfrering of licence worries), then once that's up and running - reconnect the IDE as a slave so I can drag and drop to the new drive?

Any advice appreciated before I start unplugging stuff thanks

TIA, Dan.

JasX

Firstly you'll need to make sure you'll actually have a SATA socket available in your Desktop, a motherboard based on IDE drives may have SATA I if you're lucky which will work but have you living with slower speeds, alternately you could probably buy a PCI card fairly cheaply to give you SATA I or SATA II connectivigy.

Best upgrade route is disconnect and ignore the old IDE drive, connect the SATA drive and install the new operating system afresh on the drive, then install all the relevant hardware drivers from wherever you've got them from (disk that came with the PC, manufacturers website etc)

once thats all working reconnect your IDE drive making sure its lower in the Boot order than the SATA, copy all the stuff you want to keep over to the new drive and then format the old drive.

Ps +1 techie brownie point for choosing the fastest non-SSD hard drive on the market.

PPS for extra speed you might want to consider partitioning your drive with a small outer partition (say 250GB) to make use of the faster outer section of the drive for your OS and keep that relatively uncluttered, tho benefits will be lower if you're accessing the other 750GB regularly. see this article:

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=658

danmanchester

Hi JasX,

Yeah sorry I should have put my motherboard is an Asus A8N SLI premium, an oldie but goodie with 4 sata slots.

JasX

danmanchester wrote: »

Hi JasX,

Yeah sorry I should have put my motherboard is an Asus A8N SLI premium, an oldie but goodie with 4 sata slots.

yup, I had one of those in my last PC

EDIT: ....thought the premium had 8 SATA sockets, it was the standard/non premium had 4?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/motherboards/review/2005/09/23/Asus-A8N-SLI-Premium-Socket-939-Motherboard/p1

danmanchester

JasX wrote: »

yup, I had one of those in my last PC

EDIT: ....thought the premium had 8 SATA sockets, it was the standard/non premium had 4?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/motherboards/review/2005/09/23/Asus-A8N-SLI-Premium-Socket-939-Motherboard/p1

Aaah I wasn't sure, my board is that one you linked to - just looked in the mobo user manual and it says for storage:

Nvidia nForce 4 SLI chipset supports:-
2 x UDMA
4 x Serial ATA II devices

Silicon Image 3114R

4 x Serial ATA

and then a lot of stuff about RAID configurations that I'm not going to bother with so it's either 4 or 8.

Cheers :beer:

JasX

ahh yes, 4 of them must be SATA 1, the other 4 must be SATA 2.... make sure you get the right ones

GeoffX

Windows 7 is likely to use the IDE drive during installation to the point that the machine might not boot without it attached, so you're definitely best off disconnecting it.

Hammyman

danmanchester wrote: »

This is where I'm getting a bit stuck: do I just completely remove the IDE drive, then connect the Sata, format and reinstall Windows 7 (it's a retail licence so no transfrering of licence worries), then once that's up and running - reconnect the IDE as a slave so I can drag and drop to the new drive?

Any advice appreciated before I start unplugging stuff thanks

TIA, Dan.

Yep, that's exactly what you do. When you re-attach the IDE drive, you'll need to go into the BIOS and set the first boot drive to the SATA one or the PC will boot off the IDE one as IDE takes priority and it already has a MBR present on it from the current installation.

KillerWatt

1. Attach new drive to system.
2. Set boot order in BIOS to CD/DVD-ROM - (new) HDD
3. Boot from Norton Ghost CD
4. Select option to clone original HDD to new HDD, and accept options that allow resizing of partitions due to increased size of new HDD.
5. Restart computer and allow it to boot from new HDD

Job done.

prowla

You can get IDE-SATA adapters, and also external USB caddies that a hard drive just slots into (ie. bare drive in a bse with no enclosure).
You see them at computer fairs, and on ebay.