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December 31st, 2003 18:00

Does a hard drive HAVE to be connected to primary or secondary motherboard IDE?

I just want to install my Hard drives on my Ultra ATA 100 card, they are both ata 100. Currently I am using the original 13 GB factory drive as a spare for music, which is connected as a slave from the motherboard IDE cable. My system is on a 30GB that I added later and reinstalled the system to, which is running on the Maxtor ATA 100 control card .I am adding a 160GB for media and am planning on keeping my system on the 30GB. I want to eliminate my original factory hard drive all together, but when I remove it from the motherboard IDE cable, windows wont start up. The computer boots up, shows the ATA card boot up screen, which dectects the 30GB, but then when Windows would typically start, it just shows a black screen with a cursur in the upper left hand. I eventually tried to replace the 13GB with the 30GB on the motherboard IDE rather than from the controller card, and then everything would start up fine. It doesn't matter if its on the primary or secondary, as long as a hard drive is somewhere on one of the motherboard IDE's. I guess my question is, why can't I remove the hard drive from the motherboard alltogether, and just connect them to the aftermarket ide control card. I have updated the bios to the latest version, btw. I have an xps r400, which has been otherwise been working fine for me. Is this a setting in CMOS?

I look forward to some input, thanks!

Cheers,

Mark

6 Posts

December 31st, 2003 21:00

I went through just what you are going through with an SIIG ultra 133 ata card.

Dell sells the same card and says it is compatible with my system XPS T500.

After several rounds with their tech support they actually suggested that I take it back for a refund, which I did.

Sometimes the slot it is in makes a difference. SIIG wanted it in slot 1, which I did.

I asked myself whether this would really buy me any speed. I decided since it only applies to bursts and the normally speed of reading and writing is determined by bus speed that it wasn't going to give much of any improved performance.

I think the idea of the faster ata controller card is mostly hype if you have a slow bus.

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