Hi all, I'm hoping for a quick answer to 2 quick questions. 1. I am going to buy a SATA hard drive for my MB. To install these drives is it as simple as plugging it in and the bios recognises it and off you go or is there more to it than that. 2. Is there any link between the SATA connectors and the IDE connectors. I.E. If I have a standard 5400 IDE drive installed, would my SATA 7200 drive be slowed down to match the IDE one. I know there isn't much difference in performance between SATA and IDE at the moment but I do a lot of anilogue video editing and desperatly need a second drive to edit on so I thought, with prices being so low, it may as well be a SATA drive. Thank yo in advance. GaryM Chaintech 9PJL Appogee 800FSB P4 2.8 HT FX 5900 XT 128 2*512 Samsung PC2700 (Dual)

You might have to set it up in the BIOS to use them, also there sin't anything that would slow down the SATA, it doesn't have anything to do with the IDE drives.

First enable sata in bios, next on instalation of xp when requested for Sata raid press f4 new menu will appear, this contains option to format, select yes, once formatted pc will reboot, at this point be ready to press f6 when option to install hard drive appears, you need the Sata controller drivers from motherboard disk or web transfered to floppy, insert disk when requested to load up drivers . On older editions of xp you should direct xp to drivers source. HTH