ATA-SATA

I just bought a Maxtor SATA 200GB HD, my current HD is a seagate ATA 120GB.

My MOBO has connections for both types.

Any one here know if running these two kinds ATA and SATA can cause any problems?
Personally I wouldn't think so, but I thought I'd ask this panel of experts.
Thanx.

Running both at once is fine, as long as you intend to use the ATA as a slave. There is no way that I know of to configure a SATA to work as a slave and an ATA as the master.

Since the new one (maxtor) is newer technology and supposedly faster I would like to run it as my main HD and use my current ATA as slave and backup.

Right now I am researching, looking on the net to find out how and if I can transfer everything (win XP plus all my files to the new HD).

More Q's are coming, that's what I know for sure!

here is some help to start out with.

Well thanks but not sure if that is for cloning, however I think
THIS is all I will need.
I'll try that first.
I hope I don't have any issues from the ATA to SATA format though.

I'll be doing this stuff tomorrow, unless, of couse procrastination kicks in.

Thank you.

Toadmund,

Use the Maxtor MaxBlast installation disc to copy the partition from your ATA to your SATA. Prior to doing so, be sure to partition and format the SATA drive, then perform the partition copy. It may take quite awhile to complete, but all is well in the end. Once completed, simply format the ATA drive and use it as a storage, backup, misc. drive.

Yes, well I actually opened the box yesterday, and yes there was a disk inside!

I'll use that.
Now to actually get started, shut down the net and get to work. Gaaah, I knew I'd get it not done!

When I do get to it I'll have to blow out the 10lbs of dust that resides in there!

Actually you will want to keep your ATA drive as a master since the Computer recognizes the SATA drive as a master, nothing you can do about this since the SATA does not have jumper settings like the ATA drive. They are both on different IDE channels, so they should not conflict with each other. Good luck in the swap.
Oh ya, if you are going to be doing any kind of video authoring on that drive you will want to format with the NTFS file system since it can recognize files over 4Gigs unlike the FAT32 file system which is limited to just 4 Gigs.

Well, It's all in, of course nothing is ever strait forward, I had to run out and buy an adaptor as the power supply fitting didn't match.
Oh well, I'm glad adapters are out there!

Anyway, I suppose the disk will tell me what to do, just got to find the right time to devote to doing this as I believe it takes 8-12 hours to clone a HD.

Any one have another opinion on the not being able to user the SATA drive as master? It'd be a shame to not use the faster one for everyday crud (and stuff).

Toadmund, the computer will recognize BOTH the drives as master, but on SEPERATE IDE channels, just like the cd/dvd-rom drives on one IDE channel, you have one cd drive as a master and the other as a slave, just like multiple harddrives,you have one that is a master and the other is the slave, but in the case of ATA and SATA drives together your ATA drive will be a master on IDE channel 1 (usually) and the SATA drive will be a Master on the SATA IDE channel 1, that's what is nice about multiple SATA drives they are all on their own IDE channel recognized as "Masters" to the system not the typical master/slave as with the ATA drives, no jumper settings needed, just plug and play.
See, what happens with the master/slave drives is they share the same cable, so only one drive can talk to the comp at a time, transfer times between the drives is very slow because of this, that is why they always have the harddrives and cd/dvd drives seperated from each other, for instance if you had your HD and CD-ROM drives on the same cable and you are listening to music on your cd-rom drive and moving files within your HD, you will more than likely have choppy music playback and slow file transfers because both the drives are trying to communicate on the same cable at the same time which cannot be done.
Any way I hope this helps, sorry to make it so long of a read, let me know if this is hard to understand and I will try and sum it up different.