Another IDE vs. SATA Question...

Okay, I know there's been multiple threads with similar discussions, but I couldn't find the answer with the search button, so I thought I'd ask.



When my computer boots, windows does an ide scan. There's an adjustment in the bios to allow only ide or ide and sata, but not sata only. All my connections are sata. I figure that it's no big deal since windows won't find anything during the ide scan.



Well, there is eventually going to become a problem. I only have a few sata connections avaliable, then I'll end up having to use the ide spots once I'm out of sata slots. My question is if I add an ide hard drive, will it cause a problem with windows loaded on an sata hard drive but doing the initial ide scan at start up?



Does this all make since?

not really, but i'll try and make something up anyway.



bios will read (or try to read) all the hardware connected.

the boot loader will still find windows connected on the sata drive. (regardless of any extra formatted or unformatted drives you have)

That IDE scan is for the ITE8212 RAID controller. As long as your windows drive is in the boot order you wont have a problem

There really shouldn't be any problem. The computer will be able to find the disk where the OS is installed and boot from there. I've heard of some people having conflicts between PATA and SATA drives but have never had any problems personally. Another option would be to buy an additional SATA controller card to add more SATA drives

I was thinking of that, but the only slots I have open are all the useless PCI-E x1 slots.





Thanks everyone.