For what it's worth, I was fiddling with an HP xp mce over the weekend, 
that supports both sata and ide.  Currently have 2 sata drives 
installed.  Somewhere along the way, I unplugged the primary sata drive 
and when I plugged in back into a different mb socket (4 sata sockets 
available), pc did not boot.  Switched the cable back to the original 
socket, booted up.  Not sure if there was a setting in bios to point to 
a sata 'master', but it did show a message that drives were installed on 
socket  1 and 2 and apparently was looking to boot from socket 0.   I 
haven't tried installing an ide drive yet to see how that changes the 
setup between sata/ide, master/slave.
Paul Hachmeyer

john freibergs wrote:

>Thanks for the answer.  I can easily install the OS's
>on the IDE drive and then it probably would not matter
>since I would think that if Win98 doesn't understand a
>SATA drive it would show only one drive and XP would
>show both drives.  The only question I have then would
>be does the jumper setting on the drives determine
>master and slave or is there some priority given
>because one drive would be SATA and one drive IDE?
>
>John
>
>--- "Dean K. Kukral" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>First of all, Windows ME does not support SATA, so
>>whether or not you 
>>can do what you want is somewhat questionable
>>because of the dual-boot. 
>>(Someone else may have done this.  I remember that I
>>kept ME for two 
>>years before I had to go to XP because I wanted to
>>use SATA.)
>>
>>Assuming (not a sure thing) that you can use both
>>operating systems in 
>>an XP-dominant dual-boot system, how you can mix and
>>match the drives 
>>depends somewhat on your motherboard.  You
>>**should** be able to use 
>>both drives; I have been able to use both kinds of
>>drives on my XP 
>>systems.  You will need the SATA drivers for your
>>motherboard.
>>
>>Then, again, you could put ME on one older disk and
>>XP on the new SATA 
>>disk and plug/unplug the disk that you want.  That
>>would work best if 
>>you had to have ME, but only used it rarely.
>>
>>I know that this is not as much help as you may
>>like, but it might get 
>>you started in your plans.  I'm sure that others
>>will give you more 
>>help, too.
>>
>>Dean Kukral
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- 
>>From: "John Freibergs" <[log in to unmask]>
>>Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:00 AM
>>Subject: [PCBUILD] Sata & IDE Hard drives
>>
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I have an Intel D865G mobo that seems to give me the
>>ability to have 
>>either Sata or IDE hdd's.  Right now I have a 120Gig
>>and a 40Gig that 
>>are both IDE.  But I'm probably going to have to
>>replace the 120Gig 
>>drive.  Can I go to a Sata hdd and still keep the
>>IDE drive?  I'm 
>>dual-booting 98se and xp sp2 and would like to keep
>>that because I have 
>>some programs that will not work on xp no matter
>>what.  Does that make a 
>>difference?  And then if I can mix the drives do I
>>configure them master 
>>and slave as I'm used to?  And is there a preference
>>of one or the other 
>>as the master?  Thanks for any advice you guys can
>>give.
>>
>>John
>>
>>    
>>

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