I have a PT800CE-A motherboard and two PATA IDE drives. I am
replacing the failing IDE boot drive with a new SATA drive. But when
I configure the BIOS, I have to put the mobo's SATA channel into IDE
mode (the only SATA options are RAID or IDE) after which POST reports
the SATA drive as IDE Channel 2. My question is, will the SATA drive
boot if it is set to be IDE-2, or am I forced to put my boot device on
IDE-0, meaning I can only boot from a PATA drive?

"HamNCheese" wrote:
Your question is equivalent to asking if the installer will get
the value of "x" right in "rdisk(x)" of the resulting boot.ini file
in order to boot an OS that is installed on the SATA HD.
My guess is that it will. Right now, you probably have only
ch. 0 and ch. 1 available for PATA drives. That accommodates
a maximum value of "3" for "x" in the event that you had 4 PATA
HDs in the system. By assigning the 1st SATA HD to "ch. 2",
the BIOS retains the identity of any remaining PATA drives in the
HD Boot Order. That is, if you still have 4 PATA HDs, their
corresponding values of "x" would (in the default case before
you might have reset the HD Boot Order) be:
x=0 for Master on IDE ch. 0,
x=1 for Slave on IDE ch. 0,
x=2 for Master on IDE ch. 1,
x=3 for Slave on IDE ch. 1.

If you then toss a SATA HD into the mix, it will occupy
"IDE ch. 2" and not displace any of the PATA HDs in the
HD Boot Order. It's possible that by enabling SATA and
thus enabling "IDE ch. 2" and "IDE ch. 3" for SATA HDs
to use, you remove the PATA IDE ch. 1 for 2 PATA HDs,
but the relative positions of the first 2 PATA HDs and the
added 2 SATA HDs would remain.

The way to verify this is to install the OS on the SATA
HD with the PATA HD still connected, and see what the
installer does to the PATA's and SATA's boot.ini files,
looking at the values of "x" in the "rdisk(x)" parameters of
the resulting ARC paths. The installer should set up a
dual-boot menu in the boot.ini file of one of them. If you
install the OS on the SATA HD with the PATA HD
disconnected, it won't set up a dual-boot menu for you.
Please post your results.

*TimDaniels*

The BIOS will boot whatever disk you place at the top of the list in
the setting Hard Disk Boot Priority under Advanced BIOS Features:

Hard Disk Boot Priority (Press Enter)
Scroll to this item and press <Enter> to view the following screen:
Phoenix-AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Hard Disk Boot Priority
1. Pri. Master:
2. Pri. Slave:
3. Sec. Master:
4. Sec. Slave:
5. USBHDD0:
6. USBHDD1:
7. USBHDD2:
8. Bootable Add-in Cards
Item Help
Menu Level ! !
Use < > or < > to select
a device, then press <+> to
move it up, or <-> to move it
down the list. Press <ESC>
to exit this menu.

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 18:29:03 GMT, HamNCheese
<sorry_no_e-mail@none.com> wrote:

Previously HamNCheese <sorry_no_e-mail@none.com> wrote:
Depends on your boot-maanager and on whether you adjust its
configuration. The BIOS is most likely able to select the SATA drive
as boot device. Both LILO and Grub can run from any device,
but need to be configured for it, either before booting or
interactively during boot (which is not persistent).

I have no idea what minimalistic boot mamagers like that of
Windows XP do.

Arno

Timothy Daniels <TDaniels@NoSpamDot.com> wrote
Nope. That isnt necessarily involved when you specify the boot drive in the bios boot order list.

You dont know that.

Or that.

Or that.

Makes more sense to not go that route in his situation.

And the last thing he need is a dual boot menu.

"Rod Speed" wrote:

You're so helpful, Rod. Why don't you tell us how
it works?

*TimDaniels*