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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