Heya everyone. Hoping someone can present a solution to yet another hardware problem. So here's the deal: I just built myself a new system and got a 200gb SATA drive (partitioned) that XP is booting off of. What I then tried to do is put my old 120gig Western Digital IDE HDD in as a secondary drive. But, I ran into problems. A couple times after coping data from my IDE drive to my SATA drive, the SATA drive would have to check one of its partitions for consistancy on bootup. Also, during bootup the system would "hang" at the splash screen, and take like 10x as long to boot. It would still boot ok, but it just booted slow as hell. Since then, I removed the IDE drive completely, formatted the SATA to be safe, and installed everything fresh. But I'd like to get the IDE drive working in my system if possible. My m-board is an Epox 9NPA+SLI, and has a smart recognition feature in the bios that allows a SATA drive to be set ahead of an IDE drive as the bootable hdd. But like I said, I've ran into having to check disks for consistancy, experienced unusually long delays in boot him, and even locked up once during boot sequence. I've ready about a couple other ppl experiencing this same thing (atleast the unusually long boot him). I did read something about the IDE not needing any pins (to set it as slave or master) in this particular case, but havent been able to confirm that as I've taken the drive out for now. So, I ask you fine people.....what are your thoughts? and can anyone help me get this IDE working in my system?

I think that is the SATA drive that pins don't matter. Set IDE drive to master and put it on end of cable in IDE0 MB connector. Leave boot order to SATA drive first or after floppy/CDROM. Best

run a hard disk utility on both drives and check for bad sectors. use spinrite or western digitals hard drive diagnostic tools. This message posted using 100% recycled electrons.

If it was me. I would make the IDE drive the OS drive and use the SATA drive for data. Maybe that will work better. Note that there is very little difference in speed between SATA and IDE drives.

Hmm, I'll give that a try jubalsams, and will post here again after I've tested. Thanks for the replies.

Do you maybe need to install any drivers for the controller on the motherboard??? WILL POST FOR FOOD.

Some western digital drives do not require jumpers to be set when they are alone on the IDE channel. I have 2 80GB western digital drives that have worked like that. Give it a try and let us know. ...if it ain't broke, then you ain't having fun...